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Looking at one’s self, looking at other people, voyeurism and surveillance became central concerns for many photographers.
From the article How we looked, BJP 24/06/09.
The act of looking and the question of the (male) gaze became central in the 1970s: In Laurie Anderson’s work Object/Objection/Objectivity (Fully Automated Nikon) she photographed the men who verbally assaulted her in the streets of New York, later covering their eyes with a white band in the finished images, negating and criminalising the male gaze.
Our cultures’ obsession with sex and sexuality is very apparent in most of the commercial images surrounding us. The question of portraying (sexual) identity, the balance between subject/object, how we look and see each other, is as relevant as ever.
Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976):
Diane Arbus (14 March 1923 – 26 July 1971):
Helmut Newton (31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004):
Nobuyoshi Araki (born May 25, 1940):
Sally Mann (Born May 1, 1951):
Bettina Rheims (born December 18, 1952):
Richard Kern (born 1954):
(You can see some fascinating footage of Kern shooting girls here.)
Cindy Sherman (born Jan 19, 1954):
Catherine Opie (born 1961):
Juergen Teller (born 1964):
Wolfgang Tillmans (born 15 August 1968):
More on the subject of identity and gender in the latest issue of Danish Photo Mag Filter – for fotografi #3, Theme: Normality.
I started pointing the camera at myself when I was very young. Partly because I was the subject closest at hand, but also because I was exploring identity through image making.
I doubt I would have decided to follow a creative career, had it not been for a course on “sex and sexuality in contemporary art” I took while at uni – and more importantly the support of Rune Gade, who was teaching the course. Until I met Rune, I had kept my self-portraits more or less secret.
In June 2008, when I had just joined artreview.com, critic Laura McLean-Ferris wrote a bit about my work in relation to anonymity in Roundup #10:
“…interestingly, much of the work explores portraiture as a representational trap, and many of her images of women in particular are fragmentary images of body parts, such as legs and stomachs.
The figures here seem caught in a bind, unable to represent themselves through image-making. The viewer, the photographer and the subject are all part of a process of refusal and small resistance.”
I like this in relation to the self portraits, since to some extend the viewer, photographer and the subject are one and the same, and still there is the same process of resistance going on.
I think the self-portrait genre is considered a little embarrassing and improper, there is a certain vulnerability about it, putting yourself out there at the risk of everybody regarding you as a narcissistic exhibitionist. However ourselves and our mortal coil ought to be one of the subjects we know best. I think it is a question of daring to be honest.
The self-portrait above was shortlisted for the BJP International Photography Award, single image category & exhibited at Vision 09.
When I was pregnant I photographed myself and my growing belly every few weeks. The images were uploaded to my Flickr diary. We jokingly called the resulting series The Architecture of Art, making the connection between two different kinds of creation; the construction of a child (Arthur, my son) and the much less wondrous making of an image.
I find the human shape and the changes it goes through very fascinating, after all our minds are bound to it, as is our feelings. If you think about it, that is really very hard to relate to or comprehend. When I photograph I think I’m trying to capture a glimpse of what goes on behind the skin, the combination of feeling and flesh, or somehow translate the bodily experience.
