Are We Still Allowed To Photograph Ourselves?
I read an article about a new book on portraiture photography, and one of the main sources of inspiration for the male author of the book, seems to be a woman taking photographs of herself.
“I watched with fascination tinged with a degree of horror and awe as she took no interest whatsoever in the spectacular architecture of the space, but used her smartphone to take selfie after selfie for at least 20 minutes”
I understand the point he is trying to make, but I wonder what would have happened if it had been a man taking selfies, rather than a woman.
Would the author have watched a man taking pictures of himself for twenty entire minutes? In fact would the author have been watching another man in the first place? Would he have cared if another man was taking selfies? And if the author had done all of those things, would the event have inspired an entire book?
Whenever there is judgement about selfies it always seems to be directed at girls and women, like they are doing something wrong by photographing themselves, which is of course ridiculous.
Imagine if the author had actually been watching Deana Lawson, Vivian Maier, Cindy Sherman, Jo Spence or Francesca Woodman; would they be dismissed as ‘just another woman taking selfies’?
Right Now!, Mary Sibande, 2015
I’ve seen some incredible art over the years related to self portraiture. Mary Sibande’s ‘I Came Apart At The Seams’ is the first to come to mind. Her use of self in her sculpture and photography, as well as colour and powerful storytelling resulted in a stunning exhibition at Somerset House.
On a slightly different note, but very much in relation to how girls view themselves, Philippa James’s powerful exhibition ‘Girlhood’ saw her documenting the life of her fourteen year old daughter with her friends, including the act of taking selfies. A selection from this powerful series was recently exhibited in The Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery.
l-r: work by Sheila Fell, Charmaine Watkiss, and Fiona Watson
Speaking of powerful self-representation and storytelling, here are three incredible women recently added to the Women Making Art:
An exhibition of Sheila Fell’s work seemed like the perfect excuse for me to visit Carlisle for the first time. Tullie is a great space that is currently undergoing renovation, but I’ll be visiting again later this year and am excited to see how it looks once it has fully re-opened. Sheila Fell: Cumberland on Canvas has now moved to its second location and will be on display at the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens until 28th June.
Charmaine Watkiss’s delicate drawings made for an impressive display at the Abbot Hall Museum in Kendal. Watkiss combines history, cultural traditions and plants to create these incredible works.
Fiona Watson had several pieces of her work on display at the Glasgow Print Studio. There is something really beautiful about how she is able to capture both sides of nature, that delicate balance of muted serenity as well as the bold colours.
I finally made it to the Format Festival in Derby last month and had an excellent time. There was a full day conference packed with inspirational talks by photographers, a wide variety of exhibitions to view, a pop-up reading room of photo books by women to enjoy and a photo book market to shop at.
I particularly enjoyed the talk by Alicia Bruce about her work ‘Menie: Trumped’, her book ‘I Burn But I Am Not Consumed’ and her solo exhibition: ‘The Greatest 36 Holes? Coming Soon’. I found another interesting talk she gave for the School of Visual Arts, which covers a lot of similar topics. I highly recommend sitting down with a cuppa, pressing play and getting taken into Alicia’s powerful work.
Returning nicely back to the theme of photographing ourselves, last month I attended a talk by artist Hannah Perry at the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art. Thankfully the Baltic filmed the talk and you can watch it for yourself here.
Perry’s solo exhibition at the Baltic; ‘Manual Labour’ was a powerful look at motherhood that included sculpture, printmaking, sound and a film, which Perry herself features in. This short video from Hannah explains the exhibition and how the feminine and masculine can be intertwined.
While we are still surrounded by a society that tells us how we should look, sound, think and spend our time. Owning our image and how we portray ourselves is one thing that we can do to regain some of our power. So I’m all for girls and women photographing themselves for any reason that they want to, my hope is that we inspire each other to publish our own books as well.