Oliver Chanarin photographed his partner Fionna bargess during the lockdown period during the outbreak of Covid-19. His unguarded images of Burgess aim to express the uneasy tranquillity of this period.

However, there were many critics of his work that described his images as a basic. They see his images as invasive in his way of showing a young woman’s body being inspected, scrutinized and photographically from a large variety of angles.

In these images her body is being inspected by the cameras , which unforgivingly presents every detail. Pores, wrinkles, dimples, hairs, every aspect of her body became visible. This very descriptiveness portrays the project as very male, and created to appeal to the male gaze by showing a sexualised and excessive portrayal of the female body.

One viewer said the images ‘speak of the power the man with the camera has, a power the model appears to be willing to submit to.’

Other work:

He also photographed Helen Abelen in the image titled ‘painter’s wife’:

The title, ‘Painter’s Wife’, presents Abelen not as her own person but rather as the property and an accessory to her husband. However many believed this to be problematic and offensive, in the latter half of the 20th Century, as the feminist movements didn’t appreciate the way women were being identified through their husbands.