I am an A Level student currently studying at Hautlieu School. My subjects include, Media Studies, Photography and History. My blog includes updates of my current work in both media and photography where I am able to show research, planning and experimentation. I update this blog weekly with different posts relating to my subject topics.
For my personal study I’ve mainly been looking at books filled with essays and the meaning behind photographers works rather than actual photo books. I would look at the work of Claude Cahun but she never made one it is only people that have created them for her afterwards. I have also studied Cindy Sherman and her work but I don’t really think much of the layout of her books and they aren’t really what I am looking for in my own book. I am going to be making a magazine for my main project but will be making an extra photo book for the images that I made during the school production. With these images I am unsure what kind of book I want to make as I really like the idea of having parts of the book that are like little notes or that aren’t the same size as the rest of the pages, add ins. However, I am unsure what I could use to create this or what would be best to add. I was thinking of adding in the tickets that I made for the school production as well as the programme as little add ins which would be quite interesting, I could also use some of the emails that we have made and add them in as extra little pop outs. I think that this will work well in my photo book and give a bit more context rather than just looking at the same style of images.
The Epilogue – Laia Abril
Cindy Sherman photo book
Th Longest Way Round – Chris Dorley-Brown
Claude Cahun photo book
When I Was Six – Phillip Toledano
There are three books that I really like and will take inspiration from for my own photo book. I really like the pop out’s that they each have as it gives more context to the books and adds another layer making it more interesting to look at and for the spectator to get more of an insight as to what is going on. I really like the idea of having these pop outs and I really like the look of The Epilogue book. It really stands out to me and makes the whole book feel more personal, almost like a memoir or a diary style book. I have decided to focus in on The Epilogue by Laia Abril as this book is full of pop outs and I really like that style. I think that Abril’s book is really interests and shows a personal side to a young girl’s life and her family. The pop outs are really important in Abril’s book as they do bring in more context and allows the spectator into their lives as well as letting them know what was actually going on in their lives and how the young woman was feeling up until she died from bulimia.
This style really interests me and makes me want to make my book in a similar way. I want to add in a print out of the emails between me and Mrs Butler to show the preparation that went into finally making the images for the school productions as well as possibly a section of my own little diary showing it on my list of things to do. I will also be putting in pop outs of the tickets for both nights that I created for the show as well as the programme that I made and possibly the poster too. I think that this will be the best way to add in some more detail to my photo book and really make it a diary style photo book which is what I want as the images that I made on the day are not staged at all and are documentary photographs. This style stands out to me the most and is more exciting for the spectator than just flicking through a plain book of images.
The story behind Laia Abril’s book is that of the Robinson family and their lives in the aftermath suffering from the lose of their 26 year old daughter to bulimia. Abril worked very closely with the family and reconstructed the young woman’s, Cammy, life telling her story through flashbacks, memories, objects, letters, places as well as old images. Abril shows her spectators the dilemmas and struggles that many young girls are confronted with as well as the problems that the rest of the family face with guilt and the whole grieving process. Her whole book is based around the life of this girl and living with her illness, bringing the memory of her back to life. I really like this book as it interests me a lot and it really feels personal. Here spectators are able to get more of an insight into what it is like to live with bulimia as well as living with a family member with the illness. The pop outs are really interests as they really do add more layers to the story and brings the spectator in just that much closer to what is going on and what went on in the Robinson’s lives.
The Epilogue [mini analysis]The Epilogue [mini analysis]When analyzing a couple of pages from The Epilogue photo book I noticed that everything linked in together and it all worked towards making a solid story. This is something that I think all photo books follow to maintain fluidity within the book as so that it is easy reading/viewing for the spectator. I do really like the idea of having pop outs and am trying to think of the best ways to add this into my own ideas and my own photo book. I love that the add ins really bring more detail and a whole other layer to the story. This allows the spectator in and to find out more about what is going on within the story and in the lives of the Robinson family. I like how each of the images link together under the theme of Cammy’s life as well as how the family are dealing with the grief of losing their daughter and sister at such a young age of only 26. I think that I want to make my own photo book similar to this one and have those add ins to make it more interesting and to make it stand out more for my spectator to be able to get those added layers and just that much more detail about my story.
I think that I want to create another short film with a voice over sharing my thoughts on feminism and what it means to me. I want to create an effective video to go along with it and put a visual aspect to what I say. I think that this is a good idea, although it will be a challenge to get it all done in such a short space of time. I wanted to do some added research into my work to make sure that it is accurate. I think that this is pivotal in making an effective piece of work and something that my spectators and audiences are able to really connect with and understand. I went deeper into researching about certain stereotyped groups of people. This was important for the creation of a video that I am creating as it really included all kinds of people and allows my spectator/audience to really get the concept and the meaning behind my work and the movement that I am a part of. One group of people that I wanted to focus on was the black female community, specifically how they need to style their hair to maintain its condition. I find black culture so interesting and want to embrace it myself as well as obviously standing up for the rights of black people too. I find it important for those who are faced with suppression to come together and realise that we are all in it together just at different levels. I also wanted to focus on gay people and the stereotypes that are thrown at them and how being gay seems to label you and put you into a bracket which to me is totally wrong and shouldn’t be the case. I also wanted to work on how transgender people feel within our community and the way that for so many years transgender people, more than others, are being suppressed and made to hide their true selfs and their most authentic selfs. I find all of these people so important in understanding the inequalities of our society and wanted to add this into my work as part of a short film that I am planning on making. I really do believe that the road to equality comes when we realise that we are not alone and that our culture and our being doesn’t need to clash but it can come together to fight suppression. This research is for a small segment of a short film that I will be making which I have decided is going to be my main project and will be getting stills of to create my final book.
How To | Head Wrap
For this particular shoot I wanted to highlight how many white people are happy enough to stand up for black culture yet when it comes to standing up for black lives they take a backseat and don’t want to cause any trouble. I chose the head wrap as I find that it is a clear symbol of black culture and I want my spectators/audience to be able to clearly identify that. This will be a part of a short film that I am currently creating which gives mention to the suppression of black people. I find head wraps so beautiful and think that it makes women of colour look so unique and to me really embraces their culture. After reading more into the reasoning behind the head wrap I really got to grips with just how much of black African culture it represents. The use of the head wrap is to give the hair a break and so that hair can go through deep conditioning, something that black women have to do to maintain their hair. I wanted to embrace this in my work and to really get it right and so I went looking for videos on how to do a proper head wrap. This was really interesting to research and to watch how easy it is to actually do a head wrap yet to me it looks so well put together. Here is a video that really helped me when it came to doing a head wrap on my own head.
Gay stereotypes
There are so many stereotypes within our society today and a lot of those stereotypes come from film or generalisations. I find that movies will often mimic a gay person for comic effect and will over exaggerate a gay person to make it easier for the audience to identify them as ‘the gay one’. I feel that these generic stereotypes have seeped into our society and now people actually think that all gay people are a certain way and have specific attributes. I find this so ridiculous as a sexual preference should not define you as a human being and it shouldn’t be a dominant factor in what you are like as a person. People seem to use these stereotypes to belittle gay people and to put them into a specific box that traps them and often I find that gay people are suppressed. It takes some people so long to ‘come out’ as gay and to actually tell people that they are attracted to the same sex. I really feel that with a lot of people there is a block of what they understand of gay people and think that the movies that they watch portray what gay people are like when in fact you shouldn’t be putting gay people into one category as they are just people who are attracted to the same sex.
Transgender | What it’s like
I really wanted to get what it is like to be transgender more so that I am able to successful portray my character in such a way that will represent this. I am intrigued with transgender people as it seems like such a hard place to be in and can be so isolated at times as I get the feeling that there is a lot of fighting going on in your own head of what is right and wrong and how gender should be. We tend to focus ourselves on how we should look, a woman should look one way and a man should look another way, limiting how people are expected to be. For me transgender people are trapped inside the wrong body, they aren’t authentically themselves if they remain trapped and if they conform to what is expected of them within society. I really want to be able to express the suppression that many transgender people go through as they are not given equal opportunities and people seem to turn a blind eye and think that it’s ‘just a phase’. Funny how our society has really only started to accept gay people over the past few years and they were labelled with the same thing, ‘just a phase’. I want to show how being transgender isn’t a phase and that people actually struggle through and are suppressed by our society.
My response | Experimentation
Originally this work was going to be a part of a short film that I wanted to create but I have now reshaped my idea and will no longer need this content for it but I wanted to post it anyway as this experimentation has helped inform my final project and has helped me to develop my skills with staged images, props and creating different and unique personas. I find this work to be exciting and will get my spectator thinking. This idea came from a short speech that I made with the intent of creating a short film adding in clips over the audio to visualize what I was saying. However, this idea isn’t too relevant to my other work and I feel that, although would have been good, isn’t necessary in my final project.
Inspired by black cultureGay stereotypeTransgender oppression
Modern day feminism, we now live in a world where women have more rights than ever before yet we are constantly suppressed and still face inequalities within our society, politically and economically. Feminism will always remain within our societies as it is something that needs to be fought and people need to be enlightened to. Until both men and women are treated equally within every society on the planet feminism will remain. It is a huge part of many peoples lives, some are against it and don’t really know anything about it and so resort to belittling it and undermining it as they seem to fear it. People often don’t know about feminism and the movement behind it so they bash it thinking that feminists are a bunch of middle aged women with hair arm pits, who don’t wear bras and hate men. This is the complete opposite of what feminists stand for and what feminism is all about. We aren’t here to say that men aren’t as good as women or that women should be running the world and make men see how it feels to be suppressed and belittled by the opposite sex. Feminism is looking for equality, for men and women to live equally among each other and for women to be seen as human beings and equals rather than as objects or less human because of their sex. We need to understand that slut shaming isn’t acceptable and the double standards placed on men and women is so wrong and unjustifiable. As a modern and supposedly more educated society we need to realise that wanting equality isn’t a bad thing and feeling that women are suppressed is actually happening. Across the world we are at different stages of feminism, some are fighting for the right to vote like in Saudi Arabia (up until 2015) and Vatican City, some are fighting for the right to their education in places like Nigeria and Pakistan and many women are fighting for equal pay and equal standards within society. Feminism is such a huge topic and there is still so much to fight for and to stand for, it just takes someone to stand out and want to make that change and want to make the world and much better and equal place.
“I’ve always considered myself a feminist, although I was always afraid of that word because people put so much on it, when honestly, it’s very simple. It’s just a person that believes in equality for men and women.” – Beyonce Knowles Carter
Modern day feminism is continuously growing and different issues and inequalities are coming up daily. Women across the world are being singled out purely because of their sex especially now in Europe, women are beginning to stand up against the way women are treated. For example, the Pussy Riot band in Russia go against Putin and make songs exclusively aimed at Putin himself. Another modern feminist group are the Femen group, an organisation of young women from the Ukraine who protest around with no tops on. Feminism is forever growing and more and more people are becoming aware of this. A news paper article that I have read recently, written by Rachel Spence, on feminism within art nowadays. ‘Women in art | Exhibitions held together purely by gender may be inadequate, even distasteful – but are they still a necessary evil?’ – Rachel Spence. The article basically talks about how women only exhibitions are almost offensive and kind of single women out rather than putting them onto the same level as men. We need to realise that both men and women are equally capable of making great art and we shouldn’t be looked at for our sex. I don’t want someone to look at my work and say ‘that’s good for a woman’. I want people to look at me as a photographer/filmmaker without having the label ‘female’ in front of it. I understand that these exhibitions are highlighting the success of women and somewhat empowering women that we are good enough to have our own work exhibited and it does bring light to female artists yet I really do think that it defeats the purpose and the aim that women want to achieve. I really want to get the message across that we should not be defined by our sex in any form of work. I hate hearing people say ‘male nurse’, ‘female doctor’, ‘male nanny’, ‘female boss’. I don’t know why we are labelled with our sex in front of our job description just because it seems unusual for a man or a woman to be doing that job.
Another interesting part of the article that I read was that only 7% of works on the walls of MoMA are women. I find this really shocking as women are so poorly represented here. This isn’t actually too shocking as I don’t actually know of many female artists/photographers that do have a strong backing and great work, like Cindy Sherman. I feel that women are underrepresented within the art world and yet become the subject of so many paintings and images. Historically, women have been objectified in paintings and almost made unidentifiable in works such as Picasso’s as he used geometric shapes to create his images which made the women faceless and more as objects rather than human beings. ‘In the US, women make up 60 per cent of art students but just 30 per cent of representation in galleries’ – Rachel Spence. This statement is quite shocking to me as it is so strange to have the statistics that only half the women that are within the creative industry and learning the trade are being successful and actually being exhibited. I feel that there is a prejudice within many careers and societies that women are less capable than men. I find this notion ridiculous as we are only focusing on the small-minded opinions from hundreds of years ago. Women fought for their right to vote, for their right to an education and women have fought and finally we live in a more equal world than it was a hundred years ago. Women have done more than prove themselves capable of being equal to men and keeping up with men. I just cannot comprehend why someone would focus on my sex rather than actually looking at the content that I create and the brains behind it. Women are suppressed all over the world in first, second and third world countries. We are just at different levels. I feel that suppression of women can also be related to a more extreme form of segregation in the rights of black people. In America so many black people are still fighting, loosing their lives and being singled out purely because of the colour of their skin. I don’t understand. Why does any of this matter to people? We shouldn’t be focused on the colour of someone’s skin, their background or their gender, it is so irrelevant. Just because I am female does not mean that I am less capable than a man and just because I am a female does not mean that I cannot think in the same way that a man does and just because I am female does not mean that I am less intelligent than a man. Equality comes when people recognise that there is something wrong and act on it. When people actually stand up for what is right, this is where change happens. Feminism isn’t just about women and feminism doesn’t only have female members, the more men get involved the more we are can recognise as equals and co-exist.
“as long as women aren’t free, men won’t be either.” – Noah Berlatsky
I wanted to devote a few double page spreads of my magazine to different issues that I also feel strongly about and think need to be highlighted. I wanted to show a bit more diversity within my magazine and not just solidly focus on the rights and inequalities of women. I am going to add an article about black rights and also the rights of animals as I feel that these issues are also really huge and have, in recent years, been coming into light. This will also make an interesting change in my work and will show another side to my style of work. I really do feel strongly about all three issues that I am going to have in my magazine and believe that each of them are so important and we should really look at them much more than we do. I feel that when people don’t want to get in ‘too deep’ or don’t want to disturb the peace they tend to glaze over these subjects, ignore them and pretend they aren’t there but really all of these issues are right in front of us and we need to start making changes now and we can’t keep on ignoring issues that affect all of our everyday lives.
Embracing black culture
I wanted to make an image about embracing black culture but also being there to fight for the rights for those people who face inequalities. I am constantly seeing black American citizens being ridiculed and attacked just for being black. They face police brutality and always seem to be at the receiving end of their fists. I have never really understood why people discriminate at someone simply because of the colour of their skin. It just seems so stupid and small-minded to me. I would never look as a black person, or anyone for that matter, and think that they are ‘below’ me. I see everyone as my equal and I feel that the rest of the world should see that too. I came across a song by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis entitled White Privilege II and it really made sense. Through this song they express how white people will happily adopt the culture of black people, dress like them, take their music style and yet when it comes to standing up for black rights many white people take a step back and stay silent. This is something that I don’t understand is why wouldn’t they stick up for what is right? I feel that people are in fear that they might get hate or that what they are doing is fine and that there aren’t really any problems. This is wrong, just like feminism people are afraid of it and are unwilling to help because it will make them stand out and some people may try to put them down and tell them that what they are doing is wrong but there is nothing wrong with wanting and fighting for equality. We need to understand that everyone is equal and that we cannot stay silent and just allow these inequalities to persist. The fight for equality doesn’t only lie with women and that is what I want to express through my magazine by adding pages with other unequal parts of our society and highlighting the change that we need to create a better and more equal world.
For this double page spread I am adding into my magazine, I want to have the right page filled with an article that I will make expressing my opinion as well as some facts and statistics about black culture and the way black citizens are treated in the Western world and on the left page I want to create an image of myself wearing a head wrap to show me embracing black culture and to make it really stand out I want to add a caption or slogan down the side, more of a statement that will stand out and make my spectator stop and want to read the next page to find out more about the image and to really understand the message that I am putting across. I have wanted to create an image like this for a while as I feel that it is so important to understand, especially with the constant news reports making worldwide news from America showing white police brutality on black citizens. I chose to wear a head wrap because it holds so much meaning. Before researching I didn’t know much about the head wrap and why African (American) women wore them. I’ve even seen celebrities like Beyonce wear them. After doing some additional research into the meaning behind it I found something very interesting. The head wrap was given to black slaves in America by white American’s who used it as a way of saying that they are owned by them and as a badge of enslavement. This was a way of belittling black people and making them feel less than equal and to show that they were slaves for someone else. It has now evolved into something much more than that, black American’s have taken it back and are embracing their descendants and to show that the head wrap is not a symbol of enslavement but rather a helmet of courage that has evoked an image of true homeland. It has become a uniform of identity and more a uniform of rebellion signifying their resistance to inequalities. I find that the head wrap holds such significance in black history and it really empowers women to embrace their culture and to be proud of who they are. I wanted to add this into my project because it is so strong and I want my entire magazine to be filled with strong and clear images.
For a few years now I have really been made aware of animal testing on products. I find it all so barbaric and just cruel. In the past testing on animals has been a part of doctors finding out more about our own anatomy but then they moved on to testing on corpses and opening them up to see what is inside. In the beginning testing makeup products on animals may have been acceptable because mixing chemicals together is risky and really we don’t know how they could effect our bodies, yet part of me wonders why make these products if you can’t be sure that they will be safe on our skin? I really do question current animal testing. We now know what works on our bodies and skin types so why are they continuing to test on animals? The answer lies with marketing, many makeup brands want to be able to sell their products in China and in China in order to be able to sell any products they need to have proof of testing on animals. This is disgusting and unnecessary. There is absolutely no justification in torturing a animal just so you can make more money on your products. I choose not to buy these kinds of products but it can be difficult to tell whether or not products do use animal testing which is why often those that don’t will have that as part of their packaging and marketing, for example all lush products are cruelty free. Starting in the 90s a lot of makeup brands stopped animal testing and decided against it until a few years ago when a large parent company, Estee Lauder, decided that they wanted to branch out to China for more profits so this meant re-introducing animal testing. Under the umbrella parent company of Estee Lauder is companies such as Mac cosmetics, Smashbox, Bobbi Brown, Benefit and many more. There is only one makeup brand that I know of that does not use any animal testing at all and that is Urban Decay. I admit that I do have products from Mac and Benefit but I got these products before I found out about the animal testings that are going on and I won’t be buying any more of their products again, unless animal testing is stopped. Some companies don’t surprise me with the use of animal testing like Chanel and Dior as their clothing obviously uses leather and real fur, they make their money off of stripping animals of their skin and selling it for thousands of pounds. I will say that I have leather items and I do eat meat so some part of me does use animals. However, I will not use or wear products that have been tested on animals. They get tortured, burnt, blinded and starved all for a lipstick that you might wear once or twice a week. I can’t stand the amount of testing on animals and the fact that many people aren’t really being exposed to this annoys me because everyone should know and see what is going on behind the scenes and how these animals are being treated. Animals that are tested on include: rats, mice, hamsters, rabbits and sometimes dogs. A lot of people will say ‘their rodents it doesn’t matter’ but again is there really any justification AT ALL for torture? How can we allow any form of life to be abused in the way that these animals are. I really hate it and think that it should be stopped.
For my shoot idea I want to create a double page spread I want to make images in an ad campaign style with myself as the model posing for the camera but with my hair slicked back with blood and blood covering my hands to show the real effects of the makeup and clothes that a lot of women (and men) wear. I want it to be hard hitting and for my spectator to really think about themselves and what kind of makeup they carry around with them. I wanted to show what it makes me feel like to wear products that have been tested on animals. The reason the blood will be in my hair is because there are also so many hair products that use animal testing and the blood in my hands will add more effect and create a strong image. I also wanted to create an image of a woman walking down the street wearing a fur coat holding bags from companies that do use animal testing. I just think that this will bring in more context and be an interesting image for my spectator to look at.
Here is all of the experimentation that I have done towards making my fashion magazine. I have changed my mind on what I want to create for the fashion magazine but I still wanted to add in this experimentation as creating all of the different personas has really helped me to create a better final outcome and to really get into character.
These images are parodying those young women that get lip fillers and work done on their bodies. I find this so trivial and something that young women shouldn’t even have to worry about. But that is the society we live in. We ridicule women publicly in magazines, on TV shows and to one another that it becomes hard for any woman to ever feel good about herself. The ideal of being the perfect woman is constantly drilled into young women’s minds making them feel that if they do not look a certain way then they aren’t good enough or that no one could ever love them. This ideal is so stupid and I wanted to make that clear in these images showing clearly how silly it makes young women look and that they should just embrace themselves and stop dwelling on the physical unimportant things. I do have to mention that I am nowhere near body confidence and I do see myself in a negative light, like most women. This is because we are constantly bombarded with celebrities and their flaws so if a celeb is flawed what does that make me? We forget that we are all human and that there are times where we aren’t going to look our best but there is nothing wrong with that, it’s what makes us human.
Above is an experimentation that I originally wanted to use as the front cover of my fashion magazine. The words written across my face are words that I’ve either been called or seen other women being called online and in person. I wanted to impact my spectator straight away and show them few derogatory words that are thrown at women daily. I came up with the idea and took inspiration from a past shoot that I did on femme fatales and found as many derogatory terms aimed at women as I possibly could. This research and previous experimentation has really helped me with this experiment. I also took inspiration from a video that I watched of a feminist activist group called the Pussy Riots. I came across such words in the comments that people had written anonymously. These comments were so offensive and vulgar. It really made me think about what those words meant and how someone can just through such words around as if they don’t hold much meaning or aren’t that offensive. Some of the language used to define women is absolutely disgusting and really belittles women is such a way that cannot really be defended. So in this shoot I am taking back those words, I wear them on my skin to show that the words that those people use to define me do not change who I am and they are just words. The term ‘feminazi’ came from a comment I saw and it really stood out to me. The fact that feminists, people that want equality, are compared to that of the Nazi’s that killed millions upon millions of innocent men, women and children is absolutely wrong and unjust. I find the word extremely offensive and something that shouldn’t have even been thought of. It really does show to me that the people who make these comments don’t know what they are talking about and they aren’t worth it. Those people who use words as if they are part of the english dictionary really make me wonder. How can people be so blinded by pure hatred and how can they be so stuck in their ways that they don’t even want to think about the idea of equality and won’t even try to understand what the word feminism actually means.
Some of my experimentation’s are incomplete but this is purely because I changed my mind on the whole magazine idea. I think that what I was working towards was good work and I feel that I have been able to portray both the male and female characters well. I chose to become both male and female in my shoots as I took inspiration from Claude Cahun and her work challenging the norms of how men and women should be. I wanted my work to stand out and to make sense to a wide variety of spectator. This experiment was fun to do and has helped me with the process of choosing appropriate props and settings for my final outcomes. The above image is the start of a magazine layout idea that I had and acts as a double page spread. I wanted to show the differences in male and female style as well as the idea of being masculine and feminine. I wanted to mimic existing model’s style and the way magazine photographers want their models to look and how to be positioned. I do like these images as I do think that I look like a male in the images and think that I was able to successfully portray a stereotypical masculine physique by the positions that I am standing/sitting in.
For this shoot I made a t-shirt that I got inspiration for while watching a feminist campaign online. I saw a sign that stated ‘Feminism. Back By Popular Demand’ and thought it was great and wanted to take that and bring it into my own work. I decided to paint it free-hand on the back of a plain white t-shirt that I had and on the front I decided to free-hand the symbol of female. I thought that this would work well and be a clear indication to my spectator that it was a step towards supporting feminism. For my characters I created a male and female. The male is wearing the front of the shirt with the female showing off the back of it. I thought it would also be a good idea for them to be holding paint brushes to show that they created the shirts together and are unified together. I really wanted this to be a clear message and easy for my spectator to understand. I think that this worked out well and the images came out successfully. The reason I decided against this idea of creating a magazine was because there would be so much editing to do and the lighting wasn’t right in the images as well as the fact that I came up with a new better idea. These ideas went well at the time but I did not want to develop them further.
The idea of not being ‘perfect’ does stick in many young peoples heads and I find that young women often face such challenges of being beautiful and having an amazing body. I want my spectator to stop and think ‘whoah, what?’ and be intrigued enough to read on and want to find out more and more about what it means. I decided that this would be a good shoot as it shows the problems we have within our society and how judgmental we as a society and community really are. There is constant body shaming in magazines that people actually buy and young people will actually listen to and start to think that if they don’t look a certain way then they aren’t good enough. I think that this is important to focus on as we tend to overlook these kinds of things and never think about how damaging our comments on celebrities posts could actually be on young people, both boys and girls. I came up with the idea for this shoot when I saw a video about an 18 year old girl who got lip fillers and a nose job. I find that nowadays it’s almost common for a young girl to get work done because we as women never seem to feel good enough for anyone and the only way that we can improve ourselves is if we change ourselves and remold our natural look and beauty. I think that it is sad because young women so often feel insecure and as if things need to change and if we don’t look a certain way then we are not good enough and no one will ever love you which is untrue.
Linked to this I have taken inspiration from Cindy Sherman and will make a photograph of myself barefaced and then a photograph where I have ‘work done’ and so I will over draw my lips dramatically and somehow change my nose etc with a full face of makeup and changing my body too by adding pillows in certain areas. I think that this will be a fun shoot that will bring in more concepts to my main project of feminism and the rights and expectations of women. From this shoot I want to be able to add these images into my fashion magazine as one of the ad campaigns on one side will be the natural woman and in her natural form while on the other page next to it I will have an image of myself wearing a full face of makeup with overdrawn lips and everything will be exaggerated including my hips and breasts. I want this message to be clear and to the point so that my spectator can clearly see what the message is. I find that we live in a world where it is more acceptable to get plastic surgery than to actually embrace your natural beauty.
I like the images that I have chosen as my final ones and think that they work well. These images will work well in my magazine and I will be able to add advertisements next to the final chosen image so that it blends well with the magazine. I found this shoot really fun to do as it was something different and I was able to parody women who look this way and make a light-hearted joke at how they present themselves and what women that have gone through plastic surgery will often present themselves like. This will work well in the whole sarcastic aspect of my magazine and will really make each image look individual. The reason I wanted to add this in was because I find so many young women are bombarded with images of how they are expected to be and what they are expected to look like physically which is totally unfair and ultimately unrealistic as women are born with different body shapes and what looks good on one woman might not look the same on another, that is just part of who we are. It makes me sad to see young women getting lip fillers and boob implants because they are so insecure of how they look. I feel that as a society we focus way too much on feminine beauty and not enough on education, rights and the actual treatment of women. I wanted this shoot to be obviously staged and sarcastic to give my spectator a clear understanding of the message that I am trying to get across.
I have decided that I will be making a magazine for my project instead of a photobook as I think that I will get a lot more out of it and be able to add more articles into it too. I think that the shoot with my mum and interview with her will look a lot better as a film rather than as stills just because of the way I am making it. I won’t be leaving this as one separate thing as I want to write an article on it in my magazine and add some stills from my mum as well as my parody recreations of what my mums role is. I think that this will work a lot better and give me more opportunity to create something that will stand out as well as bring across my main message of the woman’s role within our modern society. A lot of my work is based on feminism and the way women are represented and shown within modern society, focusing more on the social inequalities of men and women. I also want to add some work on other movements and things that I am passionate about that really should be talked about. I want to focus at least one page on animal testing and the use of animal fur for fashion and makeup, I also want to focus a two page spread on the rights of black people, especially in America. This situation has really been in the spotlight in recent news with major police brutality as well as white people adopting black culture yet not standing up for the inequalities that black people face. I think that this will be really interesting to add as it brings in a whole new side to my work and will add more depth to my work. Basically, I am highlighting the inequalities that so many people face within our society and how unfairly we are treated. I want to live in a society where people don’t see me as a woman and think less of me or for someone to walk past a black person and think less of them. This magazine is a movement for change and I want to put my message across as strongly as possible and to really highlight where we are at with equality in the Western world.
For my shoots I have been looking into some fashion magazines to gain some inspiration on how to lay everything out and also what images to make and where to make them. A lot of the images are taken in a studio with a plain white background which I can do in school but also I want to do some shoots out of school and in a new and different environment just to make my images a lot more interesting and to bring a bit more context and variety to my images. My magazine is obviously going to be mainly photography based and all focused on the visuals but also I want to add slogans and text to bring more context to the images and for them to make more sense. I am also planning on making some articles within my magazine, mainly being sarcastic and showing the struggle and the pressures placed on both men and women to be the ideal human and to look perfect. I want this magazine to really capture my spectators attention and I also want it to look as professional as possible. Doing research has really helped me with what kind of compositions work best for magazines and what kind of shots look good too. For example, a front cover is usually a medium close up shot showing the top half of the models body and the model usually won’t smile but stands in a certain position and has their mouth slightly open and staring into the camera. There is also another style of front cover where the model is closer to the camera and its more of a close up shot. This was really useful to have a look at so I can then make my magazine as professional looking as possible. For the inside covers I noticed a few different things. Most of the ad campaigns spread across two pages and are usually just one big image with the product and text being on the opposite page to where the model is. I also realised that a lot of fashion elements in these magazines have one image on one page covering the entire page and the other image of the other page having a white boarder around it. Research has been key in helping me to plan for my images and has made it a lot easier with the compositions that work well for magazines and what will stand out.
Rosalind Krauss is an American art critic and a Professor at the Columbia University in the City of New York for the study of Art History. Her work is to understand modernist art in all its dimensions; formal, historical and theoretical. Krauss is interested in the development in photography as well as works in art. She tends to focus on the avant-garde and feminist work. Krauss was also a critic and contributing editor for Artforum and one of the founders of the quarterly art theory journal October. She is a highly influential critic and theorist of the post Abstract Expressionist era.
In this book Krauss explores the art of painters, sculptors and photographers. She examines their work on what they represent and how they show that representation. She looks more into the movement of feminism and nine women artists. Krauss claims that the women she has written about in this book challenge the ideals of unity and identifying with masculine aesthetics. Krauss talks about Cindy Sherman, Claude Cahun, Louise Bourgeois, Dora Maar and many others in expressing her views of women within the art industry.
“Within surrealist practice, too, woman was in construction, for she is the obsessional object there as well. And since the vehicle through which she is figured is itself manifestly constructed, woman and photograph become figures for each other’s condition: ambivalent, blurred, indistinct, and lacking in, to use Edward Weston’s word, ‘authority’.” – Rosalind Krauss
Krauss states that women lack authority in the photographic world and are still being objectified and seen as things rather than as human beings. This is really interesting to me as I do find most art has really blurred the woman and made it seem as if the woman is an object and is to be controlled by the male painting her etc. However, although there is a lot of objectification of women within photography, female photographers tend to make themselves the subject and almost parody the idea of being seen as an object, especially through the work of Cindy Sherman. I believe that now women are using their bodies because it is the only thing that is our own, we are taking it back in a sense.
Krauss talks about the work of Cindy Sherman and identifies her work as ‘slavishness’ as if she becomes a slave in her own images and another art critic writes about the link between Sherman and Douglas Sirk. This critic compares the work of Sherman to a still from one of Sirk’s films and how both are focusing their work on a ‘remembered fantasy’. This is interesting to me as it brings in another dimension to Sherman’s work and how she came up with her ideas from watching old B films and Film Noir style films, this does suggest that Sherman has dreamt of envisioned her situation before hand and then worked based off of memory in her images. However, Sherman has stated before that she doesn’t envision any particular scene but she does it all there and then. She stated ‘some people have told me they remember the film that one of my images is derived from, but in fact I had no film in mind at all’. I like this quote as it shows that Sherman really does make it all up when she gets to her studio and works with what looks good in front of the camera and doesn’t solely depend on a memory or having to perfectly re-stage an image from a still that she took from an old film.
Here is a bit of an experimentation that I did while the Hautlieu School production was going on. I was asked to go down to the drama department and make images throughout the day where cast and crew were performing for their first proper audience of a load of primary school children. I decided to make images from behind the scenes to get more of an inside view of what goes on backstage before and throughout a proper show. I wanted to capture the expressions and emotions of the actors and those watching. I found this to be a great and interesting new experience to be able to go into a more professional environment and for the cast to be comfortable and welcoming to being photographed. The behind the scenes action began at around 10AM and went on until about 2PM. In that time I made over 700 images and have gone through and edited them all and narrowed it down to my favourites in this post. Most of the images that I made throughout the day are from behind the scenes and give a bit more detail into the goings on in a Hautlieu School production. The images are documentary style and are simply behind the scenes of the school production giving the spectator more of an insight into what goes on when the actors aren’t on stage and turned on as well as some images from their performance in front of their first proper audience.
Throughout history women faced unequal standards of living and were expected to live happily without suffrage. This began to change in the early 1900s as women started to stand up against this and have a mind of their own.
In 1903 a woman in Britain founded a new organisation, her name was Emmeline Pankhurst, this was the Women’s Social and Political Union. Pankhurst knew that the movement would have to become more radical and militant if they were ever to be noticed and effective. They were given the name Suffragettes by an article in The Daily Mail. These women were often silenced and little media coverage was to be allowed on their movement as many people in politics wanted them to be silenced and not to allow them to gain any sort of following. These women did many protests against the norms that their faced in their society. They simply wanted the right to vote. Throughout campaigns these women were hit down, shamed and also sent to prison. Those who made it home were shamed in the street they lived in by police and their husbands were humiliated. Those who went to prison would often go on hunger strike but were force fed through tubes going down their noses. Women were treated so poorly all because they wanted the right to a simple vote. The suffragettes went through so much and many became martyrs to the cause. Without these women we would not be where we are today with feminism.
“this was the beginning of a campaign the like of which was never known in England, or for that matter in any other country…..we interrupted a great many meetings……and we were violently thrown out and insulted. Often we were painfully bruised and hurt.” – Emmeline Pankhurst
Suffragette protests
Suffragette protests
Suffragette protests
What they did
The Suffragette women were willing to do whatever it took to get noticed by Parliament and demanded the right to vote through violent means of protest. They would throw stones in shop windows, shout down the streets with signs. These women faced police hitting them down and being thrown to the ground all because they had a difference in their views and supposedly these women were breaching the peace. To think of everything that these women had to go through just for the simple right to vote baffles me as it seems to be something that we all have now and that many people ignore and don’t actively use their right to vote. These women faced imprisonment instead of accepting fines as it would have defeated the whole purpose of their movement, they would never give in. When in prison women would go on hunger strike and would refuse to take any sort of food at all. These women were force fed, they were held down against their will and a tube would be shoved up their nose where they would be forcibly given milk and other liquidised foods. The movie Suffragette shows this in a lot of depth and really gives audiences a sense of what it would have been like just as one Suffragette in Britain back in the early 1900s. Suffragettes also faced police brutality being thrown to the ground and hit in attempts to stop them protesting. Somehow this has seeped through history and not a lot of people know about the Suffragette and the fight that women had to go through and are still going through just for the right to vote. Feminism now branches further into issues of equal pay, equality of life and equality of social standards as well as a more equal political state. This fight is nowhere near over and women are still fighting for their rights in 2016. Many Suffragettes died during protests and have since become martyrs to the cause.
Suffragette protests
Suffragette protests
Suffragette protests
What I think | Overview
It is so important that the Suffragettes fought for their rights back in the early 1900s because they gave women of the future a better chance and better opportunities. This was just the start of ridding of our suppression that has been bestowed upon us by men. These women actually lost their lives because they felt so passionately and believed that it was their right to have a simple vote. I am so pleased to live in a time where I don’t have to fight for my right to vote and to be seen as more of a human being rather than a robot that stays at home doing all of the cooking, cleaning and caring for the children. I do think that the movement of the Suffragettes is one of Britain’s untold histories, not many people know what these women went through. We aren’t taught this in school, almost as if it wasn’t real. I feel that many people are ashamed that this actually happened, that women had to fight hard to get the right to vote and that many died in the process. I also think that the brutality of the police really emulates what women went through and how far they would go to suppress these women. Without this movement and without these women I wouldn’t be in school today, I wouldn’t have an education and I probably wouldn’t have any where near as many rights as I do have now. I am so glad that these women saw that something was wrong and stood up for what they believed in as I find nowadays it is so easy to just ignore your feelings and not voice your own opinion in fear of being shamed or laughed at but these women did not care, they simply fought. This was the first step of feminism and now in the third wave of feminism we still haven’t got too much further, there is still so much change that needs to happen and many more fights to be fought and won but without the movement of the Suffragettes we as women wouldn’t be able to voice our opinions. We have so far to go in feminism and it is now becoming a whole lot more accepted in countries like America and Britain but other European countries are still fighting for their rights and some are still fighting for the right to vote.
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