The female gaze and photography
The female gaze is the feminist theory that refers to the gaze of an artistic work's female spectator, character or director. Looking at the female gaze can mean many different things and can be portrayed in many settings. The female gaze is shown across many other art forms, but for this blog entry, I will focus on the world of photography.
The female gaze is something I have always been interested in, and when it came to my current project, I knew it was something that I wanted to have my work reflect on. I have taken into consideration how the male gaze affects the fashion photography world. The focus is mainly on the way that women are photographed in glossy high-end fashion magazines. These high-end magazines, such as Vogue or Cosmaplostin, often show women airbrushed and edited to be more fitting to the stereotypical beauty standards. My work tries to contrast that with zero editing, no beauty filters and keeping the model natural. I wanted my work to have a more unique way of approaching editorial fashion, and I feel this has been achieved.
The female gaze seeks to challenge and subvert traditional gender dynamics by offering an alternative viewpoint that centres on women's subjectivity, agency, and individual experiences. This can manifest in various ways across different forms of art and media. For example, in film, the female gaze might prioritize portraying women as complex, multi-dimensional characters with their own desires and motivations rather than reducing them to mere objects of desire for the male protagonist or viewer. When used in photography, what I see of the female gaze is making images that reflect how the woman is feeling in that moment or individual female experiences or photographing the body in an empowering way that is not objective. The female gaze allows a lot of art to be made. There is always something new to photograph or endless concepts to explore within the art world. In a male-dominated art and media world, it can be challenging for female photographers to feel heard and seen. The female gaze contributes to a more thriving and more exciting photography world with better representation throughout. It challenges the social norms of gender roles, allowing viewers to see new perspectives and enabling women to feel more seen throughout art.