Female Stereotypes and Identity in Photography


  • female seen as a passive object of adoration or the gaze and sometimes seen as a castrating bitch
  • meat is murder
  • the body seen as a crucial site for the exercise of power and pleasure with respect to sex, gender and identity
  • "fashion photography plays with our own desires and fears and appreciates how the discursive body appears" (Barthes 1990: 257)
"Fashion magazines come on rather like pornography; they indulge the desire of the "reader" who looks at pictures, to be each perfect being reflected in the pages, while simultaneously engaging erotically with a femininity (and increasingly a masculinity) that is constantly being redefined." (Wilson, Elizabeth 1985: 158)

We live at a time when we are simultaneously encouraged to take care of our bodies through dieting or exercise while we are offered the opportunity for uninterrupted consumption through fast-food multinationals like McDonald's and late-night supermarkets.
"Capital accumulation and the body constitute the new binary opposition: the body acts as the other to late-capitalist development." (Lowe 1995: 174)
(source: Who's that Girl?: "Alex Eats," A Case Study in Abjection and Identity in Contemporary Fashion Photography, Paul Jobling)

Relevance to my project:
The article talks about the typical female stereotypes in fashion photography. More generally, in photography females are represented with the same or similar stereotypical traits and most importantly they are represented as being beautiful and having a perfect life. However this is not reality and what I'll do in my project is challenge these stereotypes and show the reality of the everyday life of an ordinary woman - what she does, wears, where she goes, what she eats. I want to show in my project the reality and show that what we see is mediated in order to make money by advertising and therefore I want also to create a narrative so that the audience can relate.

Artist:
Basil Vargas
"I shoot lifestyle photography. It's my favourite because it's very a very versatile style. A lot of people sum lifestyle photography up as "happy-go-lucky girl smiling at the beach photography" but it's way more than that. You can tell a story, portray an emotion, market a product or document something candid. These different types of lifestyle photography add so much variety to the style, that I enjoy it so much!" (Basil Vargas)
(source: fstoppers.com)
source: basilvargas.com

source: google images
 Relevance to my project:
Basil Vargas in his photographs tells a story, portrays feelings and emotions or more generally documents parts of everyday life. He does that by focusing on the moment, not the subject and even though his female subjects at time they have the ideal body and fit to the stereotypes, they represent reality and lifestyle and this is done by photographing in wide shots or long shots in order to focus on lifestyle and not on the female subject. His subjects also live in the modern society by not thinking of the stereotypes as we see the females reading newspapers, eating unhealthy food, etc. Similarly, I want to do the same by showing that a girl can do anything and therefore challenge stereotypes and show reality by focusing on her lifestyle and not her as an object but I also had the idea of maybe showing both side as some stereotypes of females are not negative, but they come from reality and the common things female do.


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