I have taken a lot of inspiration from Film Noir films and decided that it would be a fun idea to recreate the image of these women and mimic the way they are and the way they are represented, cliches. I have taken inspiration from Cindy Sherman for this as I am going to be a different persona in each photograph and slightly exaggerating the way Femme Fatales were represented. Although they were seen as strong and independent, to me the women are represented in a negative light as if being independent and not needing a man makes you a work of the devil, a temptress. This shows how these women were there for the male gaze and brought some diversions into the films with the inevitable death of the Femme Fatale at the end of the movie. These women were always meant for the male gaze and made to be unnecessarily seductive and made out to be something like a witch that puts a spell on the man and tries to purposely steer him off the course to possibly further his career or development as a character. Femme Fatales are shown as enchantresses.
Possible titles for entire project [and/or shoot]:
- enchantress – enchanteresse [translation to french]
- temptress – tentatrice [translation to french]
- “He keeps me on a leash so tight I can’t breath” [possible title of series of images]
For these images I wanted to incorporate the work of Barbara Kruger with Cindy Sherman and the staging of famous film noir images of femme fatale women. I will also be adding quotes from things that I have heard people say or just with the expectations placed on women. I want these images to look like posters, something that would be up in your wall with a sarcastic feel to it. I really enjoyed editing these together although at first none of them looked anything special but after I got experimenting they started to come out exactly how I wanted them to. I made up all of the phrases myself just like Kruger did when she picked images that other photographers had taken to make her own art. I used my own images and my own text just because that is the way I wanted to do it as well as experimenting with different film noir dame personas.
Experimentation:
I wanted to create strong images with strong and clear messages on them. These are all my own thoughts, text and images. I want to make this work authentic and not coming from someone else. I like the bluntness of my text as it stands out and really captures the attention of the spectator, which is what this project is all about. I like the images that I have created and don’t want to make too many more as these ones are strong on their own and too many might become slightly repetitive and irritating. I like these images as they do remind me of the work of Barbara Kruger but my images and text is a lot more directed at feminism and being a woman whereas Kruger’s work varies into other movements and categories too. The image at the bottom is an experiment that I have had in mind since I started on my film noir project and wanted to include it in my work. This one is my favourite as it is something that I wrote and performed myself, I wanted to do a parody of what a lot of people think of women and their place in society. I chose to have my subject, in this case myself, wearing all black and holding her trench coat open as if she were a flasher from the streets back in the 1960s when older men would go around wearing nothing and flash passersby for a laugh. I chose to adopt this method but instead of showing naked flesh I decided to replace it with words that would stand out a lot more and I positioned each bit of text in a way that seemed as if it were the models body. I really love how this image has turned out as it is different to the rest and it came out just how I had imagined it to be.
