Re-Viewing The Look; Photography and The Female Gaze

"Relations of looking, wether socially or in visual
representations, are governed by conventions which
unsurprisingly are structured according to the norms of
masculinity and femininity - man the active subject of the look,
the looker, the women its passive object." Such is the position
taken by the author in this article, based on notions given by
Laura Mulvey and John Berger. The article tries to answer
questions as: "How does the woman look? Is she forced to share
the way of seeing of the man, or might there be a specially
female gaze? Can the man too be the object of the gaze? Can such
a clear distinction be made between male, masculine and
feminine? Questions that are initmately bound up with those of
identity, and indeed arose as a result of feminist interrogation
of gender and sexuality." In formulating her answers, the author
uses psychoanalytic notions of Freud, Lacan and feminist
interpretations of Juliet Mitchell, Rosalind Coward, Laura
Mulvey, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva. Artworks by Helen
Chadwick, Susan Trangmar, Sunil Gupta, Hiro Sato, Roberta
Graham, Jo Spence and Mitra Tabrizian are interpreted.


Citaten:
Mulvey, Laura
Berger, John
Coward, Rosalind
Mitchell, Juliet
Irigaray, Luce
Kristeva. Julia