Ruby Kelly is a British photographer who uses her photography to express gendered expectations, stereotypes, and lifestyles. Her photographs often go against societies traditional beliefs. She challenges outdated ideologies through an exploration of the male and female body. While studying photography in sixth form, she grew to adore the art of performing for the camera. Creating photographs that resonated and changed perspectives of society helped her to overcome some of her own personal issues. As a result, when she started studying the medium at university, she immediately began producing images that triggered her audience to question their own norms and values, specifically surrounding gender roles. Being a woman, she was particularly interested in the treatment of the female body in everyday life.
Her three most celebrated projects are Boob, 2019, Call Out, 2021, and Confronting Masculinity, 2022. In Boob, she uses everyday objects, food, and arts and crafts, to confront and mock the stigma surrounding women’s breasts. She smothered different sized and textured boobs in random substances to create a lighter atmosphere around the ‘perfect breast’ stereotype. While she was developing this project, she began to recognize that the catalysts for most of her own feelings of objectification stemmed from men. Objectifying women has lived within society, both inside the household and in the public sphere. Kelly chose to capture this in Call Out. These photographs consisted of men who had cat called her in the streets, with the words of the perpetrators written underneath. By immediately taking a photo of the men, she reverted the intention of humiliation back onto the men themselves. As this project ended, Kelly began to question the differing types, expectations, and stereotypes of masculinity, to understand the behaviors of men. This led her towards her most recent project, Confronting Masculinity. This consisted of her photographing her universities rugby team, who conform to the pressures and stereotypes of manhood, and contrasting the masculine bravados with the feeling of vulnerability. She started her project outside, on the rugby pitch, surrounded by the team, and ended her investigation in the studio, with one rugby player, posing nude in positions used in a game of rugby. Her images are intriguing as they reveal to her audience a new perspective of masculinity. The monochrome diptychs are contemporary portrayals of the male gender.
Alongside her own photographic practices, Kelly has worked with her local gym to produce eye catching, brightly coloured images for their marketing. The photographs were posted and collaged on their website and social media pages. She has also collaborated with a mixed martial arts gym. The photographs she took were of the behind the scenes of a video advert.
Kelly is currently progressing her Confronting Masculinity project. She is photographing more sports teams, both male and female, in her studio naked. She plans to carry on exploring nudity, gender stereotypes and sportsmanship in her work. Alongside this, she is also evaluating how female photographers photograph the nude in a piece of critical, and theoretical writing in photography.