AD394 has centred around research and testing of ideas related to perception and belonging within western culture. I have been looking at creatives and academics who are challenging our notion of beauty, truth, genius, civilisation, form, taste and status. Photography has been my predominant medium through my work and is something I will take forward with me to my FMP. The conclusion of the module has resulted in me wanting to explore perspectives of masculinity, how cultural diversity has impacted this representation and breaking down the stereotypes surrounding what masculinity means within western culture.
Ways of Seeing by John Berger has been inspired my progression throughout the research module; the book is comprised of both pictorial and written essays that suggest seeing is a political act influenced by class, race, sex and environment. The notion of perspective has been a common theme throughout my research; perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world and how we intake information based on the trust of those around us. The result of this led to looking at artists such as Alison Jackson who uses fake news through photography to reinforce perceptions of public figures, and Adrienne Salinger who documented teenagers in their bedrooms in 90’s American to show the inaccuracy of the stereotypes represented in TV and advertisement.
I have been studying the work of Glen Erler, how he uses photography to explore ideas surrounding home and the impact this has on your practice. I was particularly inspired by how he achieves a filmic finish with his prints and how he uses the camera to capture the natural colour undertones of a space. The result of this research led me to experimenting with a medium format camera and exploring places close to my home, asking questions about what I see and how this impacts my work as a whole. Exploring both Seaford, a town I visited regularly as a child, and my home in South West London, I wanted to document my own perspective of each place, what interests me and how these things have impacted the way I see
Much of what is written in Ways of Seeing is related to how the presence of the masculine and the feminine and how this differs in historical art, how men understand women and therefore how women believe they should be understood. Men act and women appear. My later research into Grace Wales Bonner and Reba Maybury have inspired me to think about gender from the female perspective.
Burger proposes that a man’s presence centres around the promise of power he embodies, and a women’s presence centres around her attitude to herself and what can and cannot be done to her. This representation within western historical art defines our knowledge of masculinity and how power and ownership is central to maleness. Throughout my FMP I want to deconstruct this idea and explore how these values stem down into our culture as a whole.
Through completion of the FMP, I hope to develop a complete series of work that explores masculinity through a number of different culture from a female perspective. This will result in producing a collection of images that demonstrate the impact that dress has on perspective. To complete this module, I will need to have access to different cultural groups and have solid research into the optimum ways I can represent them. I will need access to a medium format camera, large quantities of film and time to experiment with printing in the darkroom. I will also need to consider book printing to display my collection of final images, researching printing companies that I can work with to create the best possible displays of my final outcomes.
Bibliography for FMP
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- Berger, John, et al. Ways of Seeing:Penguin, 2008.
- Perry, Grayson. The Descent of Man. Penguin Books, 2017.
- Portrait of Britain. Hoxton Mini Press, 2019.
- Forth, Christopher E. Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilization and the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- Perez, Caroline Criado. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Vintage Books, 2019.