WHY CHOOSE THE SUBJECT FEMININITY FOR THE IDENTITY PROJECT:
I chose to take my final pictures inspired by Justine Kurland’s ‘Girl Pictures’ and femininity. My aim was to show the stereotypical view of women… represented as soft, gentle and delicate. However, i also liked Justine’s idea which was to present her ‘Girl pictures’ as if girls were trying to run away or escape, being in a group, in rural areas and are shown helping each other throughout the pictures. You could view it in several different ways, the idea that women don’t need men to be independent and survive, the surroundings are very gentle for example lying in a filed with daisies, however, the girls are just apart of the scene they arent trying to be seen as gentle delicate ect. Some quotes from my other artist reference Clare Ray represents this idea: “the way children negotiate their surroundings and respond with an unharnessed spatial awareness, which I find really interesting when applied to the adult body.”, “… each living body is space and has space: it produces itself in space and it also produces that space.” The idea that the you aren’t just living in the space you create the space around you and how it can be perceived. Regarding the project, even though now stereotypes are changing and are less problematic, their is still the dominant ideology of how women should behave and what values they should hold.
HOW DID I PLAN THIS PROJECT:
Going by my photoshoot plan I went to a location that suits the theme of Justine Kurland’s pictures (rural, fields). Going with my friends and attempting to recreate what the girls in Justine’s images were wearing, we chose to do this photoshoot late afternoon to try and get the right lighting however it was still very bright.
PHOTOSHOOT AND EDITING:
Initially, I aimed to create more than one photoshoot, due to time and weather I only completed one photoshoot. Along the north coast is where I took my pictures, my favourites being the ones in a filed with daisies which are a connotation of feminine, gentle and delicate. Within that photoshoot I took around 100+ images so i had a large selection to choose/ edit with. At first, i wanted to leave my images how they were, I was happy with the lighting but still wanted to push myself and see what else would make them look more similar to Justine’s images. As Kurland’s photos almost look vintage, for a couple of my final images I used a vintage pre-set to enhance the more warm tones.
WHAT WENT WRONG IN THIS PROJECT:
I could’ve pushed myself more in this specific project and included different point of views to represent femininity and masculinity, however, as usual I don’t have enough time or transport to achieve what I intend on doing. Its also difficult to find people who are willing to spend a good amount of time participating and being in the photographs. Overall, I feel like I did have a thorough plan which I followed through with and was happy with what I managed to create.
Overall evaluation of whole landscape project:
Concluding the overall portraiture project the femininity and masculinity topic was my favourite as I was inspired and intrigued by Justine Kurland. I have been on top of my blog posts and have spent good amount of time on each of them to make them good quality, whilst also going back into them to improve my work. I’ve learnt a lot about different views of femininity and how it can be represented, and have enjoyed informing myself by reading through websites and theories. I was able to create several analogue pieces, and successfully mounted/presented my images thoroughly and could plan how I would present my work on the blog. Environmental portraiture I struggled in due to time, I did manage to get some pictures however I disliked them so didn’t want to develop them further. In my next project I will try expand my variety of photoshoots and manage my time better.
