Here is a link to my finished photo book Shrinking Violet
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Final Outcomes | Personal Study
Here are all of the final outcomes that I have produced for my personal study. I have found this process fun and something different with creating a photo book and a short film. I have really enjoyed exploring the role of my mother and how she sees it herself. This really inspired me to create images and to make an even better final piece in the forms of a short film and a photo book. I have also added in a PDF link to my essay.
Personal Study | Essay
Shannon O’Donnell | Personal Study Essay
Behind Every Good Man There Is A Great Woman | Short Film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx5ayloQdsI
Shrinking Violet | Photo Book
Link to photo book: Shrinking Violet | Shannon O’Donnell
Close up tasters of pages:
Photo Book Layout | Shrinking Violet
Photo Book | My Thoughts
I decided this week that I was going to make a photo book for my project as I have made some staged images and think that this will work really well with the short film that I created of my mum. I want it to look as professional as possible and for my work to stand out. I do not want to add the essay to the end of my photo book as for me it takes away from the images. I don’t want to have other photographers work in my own photo book as I want to exhibit my own work and to show my stylistic approach rather than evaluating someone else’s. I do have my essay on the blog and think that looks good enough. Editing together the photo book is going well and I am also adding in some quotes from my essay to bring more context to the photo book. I think that this is the best way to include my essay and is more original and interesting for my spectator rather than having to go through a huge chunk of text. I like to make my own quotes that hold impact and think that these look a lot better than an essay would and really embody the whole message that I want to get across in my images. I have really enjoyed making a photo book and think that it looks really great and professional as it all comes together.
Layout Idea | 1
This first idea consists of black and white staged images as well as images in colour that are of objects. I wanted to have some double page spreads as I really like the way it looks as well as a mix of colour and black and white. I like this idea but I am unsure whether or not it takes a bit away from the black and white images as they are supposed to be my main focal point. I have just been experimenting around with different layouts and am trying to find what looks best for my work. I don’t think that I will be using this for my final book as it isn’t strong enough and doesn’t look as professional as I would like it to look. This mainly just helped me get into Lightroom and how to move photos around and how to use the editing software to create the book. I feel that this design/layout is a bit all over the place with the colour and black and white images. I do think that it would look a lot better if I just stuck to having all of my images black and white and kept to a better sequence than this one. I still really like the double page spread and might use this in the future for other projects but it just doesn’t work as well for this particular project for me.
Layout Idea | 2
This layout is the one that I want to use as my final book. I think that it does look professional and is interesting for the spectator to look at. I really like that I have started with a quote of my own and ended the book with a quote of my own. I think this book is more effective as everything is in black and white so all of the images compliment one another. I tried to order my photos in such a way that represents how my mum cleans the house and in the same order that she actually cleans it. Starting from the kitchen and then ending in her bedroom this is the way my mum cleans the house. I decided to use few images as I only wanted to include my very best and my favourites. I think that this has worked out well and I have plenty of images to make an effective book. When creating this photo book I didn’t really have any photographers photo book in mind. I created something that made sense to me and that looked good for my project, I wouldn’t have been able to mimic someone else’s work or take inspiration from them as I know myself what I wanted to produce. I feel that doing this gave me more freedom to experiment and create whatever I wanted to without feeling that I need to create my book in a similar style to that of someone else’s.
Quotes for book [my own]:
Opening quote – ‘I refuse to be a shrinking violet. I will not allow old tradition to consume my freedom and make me succumb to the societal norms that are expected of me
End of book quote – ‘Gender defines everyone and, at times, can be limiting. It makes us feel that we need to belong and conform to the expectations placed on us at birth solely on whether we were born male or female.’
My Shoot: Shrinking Violet
Possible introduction for my photo book: ‘I refuse to be a shrinking violet. I will not allow old tradition to consume my freedom and make me succumb to the societal norms that are expected of me.’ I made this quote up myself and thought that it would be good to have at the front of my photo book as this is something that many women say they aren’t yet they seem to contradict themselves by taking on the role of homemaker and taking care of the house. I think that the images that I have created will add to the sarcasm of my work and really reflect how I feel about the traditional role of the woman.
This shoot came from a short film that I made of my mum and her role within the household. I really took on board what she had to say and found it very interesting, which inspired me to come up with the idea for this shoot. One of the main points of this shoot is sarcasm, in a sense it is a parody of my mother and how she is represented. I find that the role of the modern day woman is still very much focused on old traditions and leaves women in an in-between of full-time work and full-time chores at home. Instead of women staying at home and doing all of the cooking, cleaning and food shopping they are now going out and getting jobs yet the expectation still lies solely on the shoulders of women to do all the cooking, cleaning and food shopping. I find it ridiculous that even in a modern society we still have these unfair expectations, women aren’t slaves and shouldn’t be treated so within their own homes. This shoot embodies my mother in a more glamorised sense as many people try to say that doing all of the household chores isn’t that bad and I wanted to add in the expectation built up and constantly pushing down on women of having to be perfect and to look beautiful all of the time. This notion of beauty and being perfect for a man is bizarre and something that no woman should think she has to aspire to. This shoot really tells the story of all women and brings a visual understanding to the expectations and limitations women are faced with in our Western world.
The reason that I titled this shoot ‘Shrinking Violet’ is because when interviewing my mum she used this term and while reviewing the footage and listening to the audio over and over this is what really stood out to me. It made me think about how women seem to automatically become shrinking violets in their own home, many women just accept that their role is to be the homemaker and shy away from the possibility of creating a more equal living space simply because it wasn’t the way that they were brought up. I feel that this can partly be a generation thing but my mum has always been an important figure to me and she does all of the cooking, cleaning and food shopping yet I don’t want to be the same as her and I don’t want to live in the same way that she does. Somewhere down the line, that shrinking violet changes her mind and realises that she doesn’t need to be the one and shouldn’t be the one to do all of the chores and to be a housewife. Nowadays most women have jobs yet a lot of those women still think that it is ok to do 100% of the chores and the housework. I like the title Shrinking Violet purely because I liked it and it seemed to really fit with what I am doing.
I made images around my house of cleaning products and parts of the house that you usually wouldn’t focus on. I wanted to show the little details of what is around my house and the usually boring elements of cleaning etc. I want to add these images in colour into my book to add more detail to my work and to show the reality of what goes on in an average household. Along with this I will be adding black and white images that I am in as they are the staged images and parody the traditional role of the woman within our society. I chose to make these images black and white so that they would stand out more against the coloured images and I just find that with them being in black and white the spectator is more able to actually focus in on the message behind the images and what the subject is doing rather than looking around the image and being attracted to different colours, leaving my spectator distracted from what I actually want them to focus on.
How I made staged images
Instead of going back and forth to make photographs being both the director and the subject of the photos, I came up with the idea to just film myself. This was so much easier as I was able to just stand still in the footage and change the position of my body and the direction of my head and eyes. I then put that footage onto Adobe Premier Pro and took screenshots of my favourite images. I then took to Photoshop and edited them all individually. I prefer Photoshop to Lightroom and although it does take longer I’m just used to editing my photos there. After editing all of the images and making them black and white I opened them up in Lightroom and began making my photo book. This was challenging at first as I didn’t really know how to use Lightroom but eventually I got the hang of it and made my final photo book which I am happy with. I am also very happy with the images that I produced for this project and feel that they have been done well.
This is one of my favourite images in the whole series as it brings more detail to the spectator and really does remind me of a film still. I feel that this image is effective in black and white and adds to the mystery of the image. I took inspiration from Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills and how she presents herself within those images. She never really looks into the camera and always looks off into the distance in some sort of trance. I feel that my portray and version of this has worked well and really does portray my persona as a robotic traditional woman. I chose to compose my image at a bit of a lower angle and rested my camera on the worktop with a folded bag holding up the lens to the angle that I wanted it. I then recorded for a short while of me posing in similar ways to then take stills from to create images. This is my favourite still from this particular video. The facial expression of my persona looks very neutral and possibly unimpressed. As if I am unhappy doing what I am doing yet I still do it out of routine and tradition.
I wanted to explain this image more in depth. This particular image was inspired by some footage that I made of my mum while filming her for my short film. In the footage I found that my mum was always in awkward positions and always down on her knees to get every last bit of the house clean. I took that and wanted to make an image where my subject is stood in an awkward looking position. In this image I also wanted to try and represent how these women always seem to be juggling two different things at once. I also decided to look off into the distance as if it is systematic for me to be doing the chores and I don’t even need to concentrate to be able to do it. I really like this image and like that my persona is centred in the middle of the image with the two open doors either side of the subject. I wanted the doors to be open as I thought it would look better than it just being plain white in the background.
I wanted to make this image purely because it is different and not a usual photograph that you would expect to see. I wanted to have the subject in heels on one side with the other showing the oven and a tea towel in the shot to show how women are expected to be glamorous and to always be put together. I feel that women are faced with this expectation constantly and are always being put down and ridiculed if they aren’t constantly put together. This is one of my favourite images as it doesn’t show much of who is doing the chores but represents women that do. It allows my spectator to identify more with the persona and think of themselves in her shoes. I also like the light shadow that is at the top of my legs from my dress, it just makes the image more interesting.
This particular image is heavily inspired by a shot that I got of my mum when making my short film for this project. I liked how it looked and wanted to recreate this with my persona. I find this image interesting, it almost looks strange too. It is odd to find a woman doing house chores in heels and a dress but that is the whole point of my shoot. I just really like this image and think that my spectators will like to look at it. I find that this shoot makes the mundane of doing house chores look a lot more exciting. I find that the position that the subject is in looks robotic and this is exactly what I wanted to portray.
Feeding the shrinking violet. I chose to have these flowers act as the shrinking violet because they are beautiful yet quite, obviously as they are flowers. I like this image as I chose to look away and make it seem as though I didn’t even know that I was feeding it which symbolises what many women seem to do. They allow themselves to take on the traditional role of the woman without ever challenging it or wanting to change the expectations placed on women. I like this image and the position of my persona as it looks as though I’m not even trying, again this is something that I feel women do. They just repeat the same old process and routine without even thinking about it, they become slaves in their own homes. I like the composition of this photograph and that it is a medium shot of my persona. I feel that the image is at the perfect size and angle to get the flower in as well as its plant pot as well as just enough detail of my persona to fit into the image too.
Image comparison | B&W vs colour
Final Essay
Essay | Source Bank
Sources | Books
– Bachelors – Rosalind Krauss
– The Complete Untitled Film Stills – Cindy Sherman
– Jersey Heritage Trust – Heritage Magazine
– We Should All Be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Sources | Online interviews [YouTube clips]
Interview with Cindy Sherman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiszC33puc0
Sources | Articles
– Bloomberg Business review on Cindy Sherman
– Article on the work of Claude Cahun: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-04-11/entertainment/ct-ent-0412-claude-cahun-review-20120411_1_portraits-art-institute-masks
– Chicago Tribune article on ‘Provocative new exhibit full of self-portraits from Claude Cahun
– Feminist Art Archive review on Claude Cahun
Behind Every Good Man There Is A Great Woman | My Shoot
This shoot is very personal to me. It is about my mother and how she runs the house and seems to do everything. I wanted to do this shoot to show the unfair pressures that are put on women with families as they always seem to have to run the household and run around everywhere and be expected to do it all every single day. This is a more ‘traditional’ or old-fashioned household where the woman is now expected to work a full-time job only to come home to do all the cooking, cleaning and maintaining the home. Through my work my mother represents many women that go through this every single day. Growing up I would always look at my mothers role and think that I don’t want that kind of life, where I’m expected to do everything and basically live to serve. To me, she almost becomes a slave in her own home. I don’t want that kind of life and through this shoot I want to find out more about her role and what she thinks about it through interviews with her.
I get really annoyed when I see my mum running around and doing everything for my family. I do have to say that sometimes I am really lazy and don’t do much but I am a teenager and we are known for being extremely lazy. Both my parents should be doing equal amounts of chores to maintain the house, not just my mum. It is so frustrating to see my mum come home later than my dad and go straight into the kitchen to start making dinner when my dad has been home and is more than capable of making it too. However, my dad does sometimes make me dinner but only when my mum is working late or out. They should both equally be spreading things out and working as a team to get all of the chores done rather than just allowing my mum to do it all. There is another side to this though because there have been occasions when I’ve tried to help my mum peel potatoes or vacuum the floor and she just tends to prefer to do it all herself but this is because it is what she is used to and how she has grown to become accustomed to just doing it all on her own. There is not a single part of me that looks at my mums role in the household and wants to do it. I don’t want to come home from a hard day of working to them work some more and not get to rest until I go to bed. I have no desire to be a ‘housewife’ and run after my husband day in and day out. It just isn’t for me. Yet some women are happy and willing to do this which I accept but I feel that, with my mum especially, it has been placed on them since a young age so they know no different and just think that doing everything is the norm and they should always be doing the chores, cleaning and food shopping. Through some interviews I hope to find out a bit more about why she does it all and what she actually thinks about all of the work that she does.
Reflection | Progress so far
After reviewing footage that I have already got of my mum, none of it seems good enough to me to be a still. It just isn’t that interesting on its own. I want to make this film great and for it to stand out and be as visually pleasing as it is interesting to listen to. I am constantly looking at the composition of the shots and getting different angles to make my film more appealing and it is going well. I have managed to collect some good shots together that flow well with the interview which I have playing over the footage. It looks great altogether and really does make sense and is interesting but a still on its own just doesn’t look right and, in my opinion, isn’t a strong enough image to really impact my spectator. This footage will be staying as a film and not made into stills. The only stills that might make it as finals will be the ones of me re-staging and parodying my mums role in the household from the footage I have made of her. I think that this is the best way to move forward as it will be a whole lot more interesting for my spectator who can then go to the film and watch it to get more background and context to the images that I have made. Honestly, I find looking at stills of the film boring and it makes me disinterested, maybe that’s because I see it all the time and I’m just used to seeing my mum doing all the work but I just don’t think the shots look good enough to make a spectator think ‘whoah, this is amazing’ so I’m definitely going to be making this a film ONLY and then using the images that I will be making as stills.
I’m continuously collecting together shots of my mum and her life to be able to make the best film that I possibly can. A new layer which I have added to my film is archive images, here I got my mum to find images of her parents and of herself when she was younger just to make it that more personal as well as putting a face to the name with the interview. I have also got some footage of my own archive images of me when I was younger and also images alongside my older sister and my mum [my dad was always behind the camera]. I really like the footage that I have so far and think that it really makes my short film that much better allowing my audience in on my personal life and my mother’s life a bit more. This was really nice to see images of my grandparents as I have never met either of them, they both died before I was born, so seeing these images was a nice experience. It was also quite funny to look back at old family images of me and my sisters too. I like the idea of adding in these archive images as I really love the way those old images look, they are all old images from the 60s of my mums family.
I also have more footage of my mum. I went food shopping with her and have filmed her doing what she would usually do when food shopping, this was interesting to see the heavy bags that my mum lifts and how boring food shopping can be, especially when you have to do it alone. I really appreciate what my mum does and I want my work to reflect that, to show just how much she does for me and my family. The shots are coming together nicely and I am well into the editing process and have accumulated many shots to bring visuals to the audio interview that I did with my mum. One thing that I think I will need to change about my audio footage is the ending as it just kind of ends and I want it to have a better ending, something that will have more of an impact and that will also leave my audience thinking about the role that their own mothers have within their household.
After editing the clips together for a while now I am starting to really see progress and am liking what I have created so far. I still need to collect together some other shots of archive images as well as possibly some more footage of my mum just to bring the whole video together and to get the final bits needed. I am actually missing a bit of a chunk of footage within my short film where my mum is talking about her religion and why she didn’t bring me up in the same way that she was brought up which I haven’t made much footage for and am trying to come up with ideas as to how I would be able to fill that gap as my mum literally only has one small candle in our whole house that resembles her religion and the rest is pretty neutral. I also can’t film her parents as neither of them are alive and my mum only really has one proper image of them and that is in a family photo with my mums parents and two of her sisters. I think that I might be able to get some footage of my two Auntie’s as they are over from Scotland [from 9th-13th February] but I am unsure how relevant this will be in my short film. I have also got the idea of possibly going to a church and filming around there to fill in the gaps in my short film, I also actually have some shots from a Notre Dame church when I went to the South of France a few years ago which I may be able to use.
I’ve had a think and reviewed my short film so far and think that it will just be best to actually go to a local church and ask if I can film around to get the clips and shots that are needed. I couldn’t find the clips from when I went away on holiday with my parents and we visited a Notre Dame church so I will just have to go out and get the new footage as planned. I also don’t think that it would be relevant to get footage of my auntie’s as they are not mentioned at all throughout the interview and it just wouldn’t fit in with the rest of my short film. Overall, I am happy with how it looks so far and think that it has potential to look really good once everything is added and it is all done. Watching this short film come together and listening to what my mum has to say has given me some inspiration to create another short film about feminism with a voice over. I think that this will be beneficial to my project and will actually work out much better than a magazine would as I will be able to take stills from this project and put them into a photo book.
UPDATE: Over the half term I have been working on my short film and managed to get some extra footage of a church to fit in with the audio where my mum talks about her religion. I think that these shots have worked well in my short film and it is really starting to come together. I realized which editing that I still need to get some shots of my mum putting on her work clothes and getting ready for work as there is a section where she mentions what she does so this would fit in quite nicely. I will be getting these shots this week and adding them into my short film.
What next?
So after looking through this footage and putting together the whole video I wanted to keep up with my idea of parodying her role and mimicking what she does myself in a series of images. I want these images to be a reflection of how I see my mum and what she kind of represents to me. I am going to be staging images dressed in one of my mum’s dresses and I am going to change my hair around so that it looks like her hairstyle. I want to make these images stand out and to be interesting to look at, somehow I need to make cooking and cleaning look interesting. Taking inspiration from Cindy Sherman I want to make my new persona/character almost unrealistic, something that you would only ever see in movies or something. This will just make the images stand out more and will really emphasis that I am parodying the way women, specifically my mum, are perceived within our modern society. These images will be taken over the half term and my aim is to get at least two images from each part of my mums role. For example, I will be doing a shoot in the kitchen, one shoot will be in the bathroom cleaning, another will be in the living room cleaning and another shoot would also be food shopping. Little shoots that I want to hold big impact and to really send a clear message to my spectator about the role of women in modern society and how flawed it all is.
Short Film | An interview with my mum
Here is the finished short film all about my mum. I interviewed her asking various questions and from there have created a sequence of shots that correspond to what she is saying. I think that this short film has worked well and it gave me more of an insight as to what my mum thinks and as a personal study has really helped me to develop my thoughts on feminism as well as how I see my mums role compared to my own. This short film has given me inspiration to create more images based around the woman’s role within our Western society and what is expected of her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx5ayloQdsI
Short Film | Evaluation
I wanted to explain some of the shots I made in my short film in a bit more depth to show the meaning behind them. I feel that my short film has been successful and does represent my mother and many other women that follow the same traditional role as her. I wanted my short film to stand out and for the visuals to bring to life what my mother is saying in the interview. I really think that this project has given me a better understanding of my mother’s role and has really solidified for me the fight for equality in not only the Western world but the entire globe. I feel that this project has allowed me to develop my knowledge and understanding of other women fighting for their freedom and has helped me to understand more clearly that women need to fight for their rights and for our voices to be heard we need to stand up for what we believe in.
Image analysis 1
I put this clip in where my mum talks about her mother and how my mum’s role is harder than that of her own mother’s as she has a full-time job. The reason for this is actually because in the background of this is the location of my mum’s work and I wanted to have it as a subtle background just because I think that it looks better this way. I like this shot as my mum is concentrating on the road and not on the camera so it looks a lot more natural and she is acting as if the camera isn’t even there. I think that I was at an advantage throughout as my mum obviously feels comfortable around me and isn’t worried or nervous about what I am filming of her. I think being an insider for this project has helped me to create a much more precise and accurate project as I’ve known my mum my entire life and by now I understand her role and I am there everyday so I know what she does and doesn’t do. I feel that this clip is also interesting as it is slightly darker than a lot of my footage and stands out making my audience/spectator look at it more and want to analyse it more.
Image analysis 2
I love this still! This is an archive image that I decided to add into my project just to add more layers and to make it more personal for audience. The photo on the left is of my mother when she was younger and the one on the right is of me. I wanted to put the two next to one another as I find that we look so much alike in these images. I like this clip as it fits in to what my mum was talking about and the question I asked about how I was raised compared to how my mum was raised. I think that using archive images really helps with the development of my project and makes it more personal to me sharing old photographs of my childhood as well as looking more into the childhood of my mother. I this that the composition of this photograph is good as there is an even amount of space around the sides of the entire image and I also like how I have placed the images too. I wanted them to slightly overlap one another as I wanted the main elements of the images to be how similar I look to my mother when we were both younger. I chose to just put the images on a bed with a white cover as this is the room that my mum keeps the images, right next to her bed in a cupboard and in a small box. I think that this just makes it more authentic and adds yet another more personal layer to my project.
Image analysis 3
This shot is from a mini sequence that I created of my mum getting ready for work. Here the audio is my mum explaining her job and how many females there are at her work. I didn’t want to film her at work as the whole thing about my project is her life at home and her role within the household. I wanted my mum to be putting on her makeup as she usually does as it shows the expectation put on women to be glamorous and to look feminine. I just thought that this would be a nice extension on showing what are expected of women within our society as being the homemaker as well as constantly being glamorous. This has helped me with the idea for my stills mimicking my mums role and creating a new persona that parody’s her role and the traditional expectation of the role of women in our society. I also think that this is a good shot and I like the composition of a close up of my mum on the left hand side of the clip while the right hand side shows the mirror she is looking into adding more context to the still. I really like this still as it is clear and interesting to look at and one of the rare shots showing my mum at a closer angle than I usually do. Within my short film I have mainly shot from afar and looking at my mum from a distance but this shot makes it more personal and shows the actual features of my mum’s face more up close.
Image analysis 4
I decided to go down to St. Thomas’ church to get some footage around the building to go with the audio of my mum talking about her early life as a Catholic and her religion. I find that these shots bring to life what my mum is talking about and blends well with the whole film. I like this shot in particular as the painting in the frame is perfectly centered in the middle of the clip and I really like how the shadow falls as the light shines down on the painting. I also chose to film this particular painting because of the writing around it, ‘THE KING’S GOOD SERVANT BUT GOD’S FIRST’. I find this really interesting as it shows how devoted people are to their religion and that they would first follow God over any ruler. I also wanted to add this in kind of as a symbol of how my mum doesn’t really practice Catholicism. I really like that the light is shining down on the painting as many people see God as a ray of light and his light will shine down on you. This just brings the still together and adds to how many people see religion.
Image analysis 5
I added in archive images for my short film as it makes it a lot more personal and as I’m interviewing my mum I thought it would fit to share images of my early life and the life of my mum. I like the images that I have chosen as it shows happy moments in our lives and it matches with what my mum is talking about. It is also good for my spectator to see a little more of my life and my family and how I was brought up compared to how my mum had been brought up. I like adding in archive images as there is something quite unique about them, they are printed and show an older form of media which seems to be getting lost in the age of phones and storing images of computers.
Image analysis 6
I really like this shot of my mum cleaning as you aren’t really able to see her too clearly but the focus is on what she is doing and her surroundings. I like that my mum’s face isn’t visible in the shot as it adds a sense of mystery and makes my audience want to see her face and to find out a little more about her. I like the harsh lighting in this image with it being quite dark and just a ray of natural light coming through the large windows. I think that this still adds to the story of how my mum is continuously cleaning up after everyone and is even getting down on her hands and knees to make sure the flat is looking how she wants it to look. This shot does work really well within my short film and adds to the little details of what my mum does and how she does it. This also gave me some inspiration for my photo shoot as she always seems to be in awkward positions to try and get everything clean and she seems to always be juggling so many jobs at one time. I wanted to exaggerate this in my own work and this image has really helped me to develop this idea further.
Extra Clips Used | Research
Here are the videos that I got snippets from for my short film to add more context to what my mum is saying and to also give my short film more layers and allow my audience to visually see what my mum may be talking about and expressing.
Interview | My Mum
Before interviewing my mum I came up with some questions that I wanted to ask her and to find out a bit more about. The interview went well as my mum was obviously comfortable being interviewed by me so I feel that I got the best possible answers. It was interesting to find out a bit more about my mums early life and what it was like for her growing up during the 1960s and how different it was to the way that I have been brought up. A lot of my mum’s answers really interested me and gave me inspiration to make effective images, I found that this project has really helped me to get a better understanding of her and how she sees her role which I want to be able to express my views and images well.
Questions to ask:
Q. Who are you/what defines you?
“My name is Susan, I’m fifty-six years old. I’m a mother of three girls and a grandmother.”
Q. What is your role in the household?
e.g. mother, provider, carer etc
“I do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, umm”
Q. Do you enjoy this role?
“Yeah, well I wouldn’t exactly say I enjoy it, umm, sometimes I do. But it’s just what I do.”
Q. Does this role ever challenge you, do you ever wish your role was different?
“No I don’t wish that I had a different one, sometimes I wish it was easier, a bit easier. If other people would help me but I guess I’m a bit, a bit of a control freak so I tend to wanna do things in a certain way so it’s difficult.”
Q. Growing up what were your mum and dads roles in the household?
– Do you think this has affected how you see your role?
“umm, growing up my mum’s role was very similar to mine, umm. My dad worked, my mum had a little part-time job but she was the main umm homemaker. She did all the cooking, cleaning, looking after the kids just like I do but the only difference is that I’ve got a full-time job whereas she worked part-time umm. So it’s harder.. I think.”
Q. How do you think their roles have affected you and what you think is expected of you?
“Probably, probably the way I’ve been brought up, you know, has made me the person I am and that why I..I do the things I do because in my house, when I was growing up, it was expected that the woman did those kind of things.”
Q. Why did you not bring me up Catholic like you were brought up? Do you think it’s made a difference?
“No not really, umm. I just wanted to let you make your own choices. Uhh, your dad wasn’t a catholic so when we got married we didn’t get married in a Catholic church and he was not against catholic, Catholicism but he wasn’t really interested in any religion and at that time I wasn’t practicing catholic whereas I did when I was younger, so I didn’t think that it was right to force it upon you especially when he wasn’t really interested so.. that’s the reason.”
Q. Where both your mum and dad Catholics?
“My dad was a Catholic. My mum wasn’t a Catholic, she was a Protestant and she became a Catholic when she married my dad because they got married in a Catholic church and to do that you both had to be Catholic.”
Q. Where do you work?
“I work in a bank, umm my role is a finance manager.”
Q. How many managers in your department are female?
“At the moment there’s only one, umm. There was a few managers previous to that but people have left, umm. There was about fifteen people in my department. Umm, there’s only two females and at the moment currently I am the only manager there.”
Q. What are your thoughts on feminism?
“I don’t agree with the extremist, extreme views on feminism, umm. Yeah I think women should have rights and I’m no one of these shrinking violets that sits there in the office and lets men walk all over me, I do agree with women having the similar rights but I’m not quite as strong in my views as you are. Umm.. I don’t, I believe there is certain things, and you probably won’t like this, but I believe that there’s certain things that men are better at than women and vice versa and that’s just our makeup.”
Q. Why do you think the two of us have very different views on things such as feminism etc? Is it because of the time I grew up or because of something else?
“Things change over the years don’t they and these days young girl especially, I think, don’t want to have that role. They don’t want to be seen as, you know, the.. the homemaker because they feel that they work equally the same as men so why should they do that. Why should they be the one that does that. Now that, that’s fine and I accept that because yeah I do agree that the men should help out more and probably if I’d instilled that in your dad, initially, then it would have been easier for me. But that was just the way I was brought up and so I just took that role on myself, It’s not as though he forced it upon me, so, it’s probably my own fault really.”
Q. What are your aspirations for me in my life?
“Oh I want you to fulfill you dreams and be the best you can. But it doesn’t mean that to do that you need to be some sort of superstar. As long as you’re happy in yourself and, you know, you’ve done what you wanna do. If that was just getting married and settling down and having a family, if that’s what you wanted to do then I’d be happy with that but knowing you that won’t be. So, I want you to do what you want to do.”
What I am Doing
Over the past couple of weeks I have been experimenting with different photo shoots and styles that I want to create. I originally had the idea of creating a fashion magazine, taking inspiration from Claude Cahun and dressing up as both the male and female models. This worked out well at the time and I think that the experiment was successful but I think that something was missing. All of the previous work that I have created in the lead up to my final idea has actually helped me a lot and is still very relevant to how I am going to go about my final piece. The work done has taught me what to do and what not to do. What I now know will work and what won’t. The experimentation has really helped me get my head around a final project. So for my final project I am sticking to creating a short film of my mum which is very nearly finished. I took inspiration from this short film and the interview that I did with my mum and have also made some images of myself mimicking my mother’s role. I think that this is working out well and will be the best final project for me to create. For my staged shoot I took much of my inspiration from Cindy Sherman and her Untitled Film Stills. On the photo book aspect of this I have been looking at past students work and think that possibly a small handmade book will be the most effective as I don’t think that I would have enough photographs to make an entire photo book. This gives me room to be more creative and to experiment a bit more, I want my images to almost be like film stills and to look different. I think that this will complement my short film nicely and they will work well together. Another reason that I would want to create my own book is actually because I came up with the idea of creating a folder type thing to put it in. I want to get a tea towel, sew around the edges, leaving a hole in the top obviously, and have my book live inside it. I think that this will be really interesting and give my spectator more to look at and it will just be another layer into the mix as well as photographs and film. I also think that this will add to the whole idea of stereotypes in my work as I myself will be sewing the fabric and putting it all together which is what women are actually expected to do. I think that this will work out well and showcase another element of female stereotypes in my work. The book that I want to create will be quite small and I am considering making the images square to mimic an old film camera, bringing it back to the traditional roles that were always expected of women and still are today. This will be an interesting experiment and I think that it could work out really well.
Short Film | Review
My short film is an audio interview with my mum and visuals that correspond to what she is saying. This has worked out really well and given me inspiration for my essay as well as what photographs to produce. I found the film really fun to create as I got to make videos instead of just photographs and it was interesting to actually get to know my mum a little bit more and about her upbringing and her own life. I found the whole experience of making this short film exciting as it is something new and something that I was interested in. If it was on any thing other than the topic of feminism or something that I am passionate about I don’t think that I would have enjoyed it as much and I wouldn’t have been able to create the work I have. This short film has been a really great gateway towards figuring out what kind of photo book I want to create and how I should go about creating it.
Photo Book | Idea
For a while now I’ve had the idea of making a folder/blanket for my photo book. I’ve known what I want the outside of my photo book to look like more than what I want the actual photo book to look like itself. I want to sew around a tea towel and have my book live inside this tea towel, this will just add yet another layer to my entire project and I think that it will work really well. I have recently come up with the idea of completely making a photo book on my own as a way of showing how women seem to do everything, even make their own photo book. This will be an added element showing the stereotypes that women are faced with as well. I think that this will be a nice added touch to my project and will work out really well. I want a small photo book as I don’t think that I will have enough images to make an entire one and it will just look better if I create it myself and make it look more like stills from a film as if it is unreal or something that shouldn’t be real. I might make my book look like one that waiters/waitresses have where they take your order. This will also add to the detail that women are seen as slaves in their own homes and the unfair expectations opposed on them. This will be interesting to create but I think that I will be able to manage it. If I don’t manage to make my own book by hand I want to create a small book on blurb but still have it living inside of a tea towel.
My Hypothesis
What do I want to find out?
For my personal study I want to explore more in depth the role of women within our modern society and how they are portrayed. I want to explore the unfair advantages and mainly disadvantages faced with women in our society. I believe that this is a very important subject and it interests me and I want to exaggerate these stereotypes in my images in order to make a clear and obvious message to my spectators on inequality of the sexes.
– does everyone see the inequalities faced with men and women
– how our first world countries have inequalities [social aspects]
– will my work impact my spectators
– the ideals faced with body image on both men and women as well as the expectation put on both sexes to succeed in different ways [women encouraged to get married and have children whereas men are encouraged to work and make money]
– how the fashion industry shapes gender
Hypothesis | Questions
Chosen Question: How does the work of Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman question the politics of gender and female stereotypes?
What is feminism?
(linked to a previous post)
Feminism could only come about after the Suffragette movement as women were only then starting to get a voice and being seen more equally. Here feminism came about because men and women are faced with unfair standards and stereotypes. Feminism is the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. This movement does not see women as more important than men but it sees them as equals. In recent years it has become a very controversial topic of which some people are saying it to be a ‘man hating’ movement claiming that women ‘are more important and that men don’t face problems’. This is the wrong perception of the movement as there are male feminists. People tend to get it confused because of the name of the movement suggests feminine which is obviously associated with women. Feminism urges to change stereotype, objectification and derogatory lexis that mainly women face day to day. For example, if a woman were to sleep around she would be labelled as a ‘slag’, ‘slut’, ‘whore’ etc unlike a man who would not even be labelled or even be called a ‘lad’ by friends. This is a hypocritical and unfair label that women are constantly faced with. However, there are many other aspects to feminism that seek the equality of life for both men and women. Another example would be that if a male is seen to be sad or to show emotion he is ‘probably gay’ which is completely wrong as women are allowed to be emotional. There are so many unfair and unrealistic stereotypes faced with men and women which feminists are trying to change. Many photographers use this within their work to further the movement of feminism such as Cindy Sherman, Yoko Ono and Claude Cahun.