'Social Types and Representation' - Photomedia Reader (Second Year)

I have been looking at an article from our second year module Photomedia called “Social Types and Representation.”  This article stood out to me because it discusses how identities are socially constructed.  For example it made me think of the Youtube video I uploaded to my blog earlier called “How to trick people into thinking you are good looking.”  This is because in the video she is altering her image to what she believes is represented as beautiful that has been social constructed by the media.  “We experience our lives and present ourselves to others in ways which have been shaped by our knowledge of films and photos we have seen, stories we have read and so on” (pg 5).  It is reiterating that we believe what we see and what we are taught, but it does not necessarily represent reality, but are representations of what the media believes it to be.  This is what I am trying to portray in my photographs that representation of women (in the media) is not necessarily reality, for example all people don’t look like certain images of women that are produced, but feel pressured to change their appearance to achieve what they see in front of them.

I want to show through my images how powerful the media’s representation is, “No representation is simply a representation of reality: it is always a reality sense from a particular perspective or subject positions” (pg 7). For example shown through media images such as television, magazines and photographs. Stereotypes’ are another form of representation, they define people for example women’s appearance and how they act in society. Relating back to the film ‘Miss Representation’ is just shows how hard it is to escape from certain stereotypes of women which are represented in society though the media.