Guest Speaker 8: Charlotte Jansen
Charlotte Jansen is an editor for Elephant magazine and also the writer of the book “Girl on Girl: Photography in the age of the female gaze”. I was excited about this talk as I have read her book thoroughly before, and the female gaze is a huge influence within my own practice.
I was particularly interested in how she mentioned the background of the female gaze, what it means and how it used in photography and art by women. Also how women are represented in society, and fashion, their agency is removed, for instance in the Zara ‘The Female Gaze’ collection. This was an in-depth analysis of the agency of women, or lack of it in photography, particularly fashion photography.
This talk changed my perspective of the female gaze and how women are presented in society, fashion, and photography.
Guided the work for my portfolio and journey of my project and helped research.
I gained more understanding of the female gaze and the feminist issues and key female photographers that have impacted the female gaze.
She went through the different photographers in her books and the writers or theorists that have influenced the female gaze. The women in her book are all photographers who present themselves or show female representation in different ways.
I found the technical tropes she talked about very relevant to my practice; self-staging, self as theatre, costume, makeup, props used to deconstruct gender, self-portraiture, natural or overly fake setups and lighting, and the sense of community. Also within the current pandemic, self-portraiture will become more common for photographers.
These are things that I am looking into and considering within my own practice and my final year project. This quote by Isabelle Wenzel is influential in my current project and the work of Iiu Susiraja, which symbolises how female stereotypes, particularly in advertisements, is ridiculous, and it mocks this in her work.
Charlotte Jansen Elephant magazine website: https://elephant.art/
Quote from Isabelle Wenzel, Screenshot.
Zara’s “The Female Gaze” lingerie collection
Screenshot of Iiu Susiraja’s work