This paper explores how women’s self-portrait photography could be interpreted as resistance to i... more This paper explores how women’s self-portrait photography could be interpreted as resistance to intersectional oppressions, in particular, hetero-patriarchal oppression. By combining visual methodologies with feminist geographic theory, I will look at self-portraits by Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman, and Cindy Sherman in order to understand contested representations of gender. Interpreting women’s self-portraits as a re-visioning of the self within various spaces and scales acknowledges the possibility of resistance in everyday life. Reinterpreting “the female gaze” might provide us a way to look at self-portrait photography as a way to subvert the sexualized male gaze and contest complexities of power relations. Self-portraits as performance and remaking of the self could contribute to our understandings of female subjectivity. The act of placing the self outside the body with the photograph might allow for a new reading of gender binaries and what constitutes the self, in particular, the female self within a male dominated world.
Keywords:
Gender, feminist geography, subjectivity, self-portraits
This paper explores how women’s self-portrait photography could be interpreted as resistance to i... more This paper explores how women’s self-portrait photography could be interpreted as resistance to intersectional oppressions, in particular, hetero-patriarchal oppression. By combining visual methodologies with feminist geographic theory, I will look at self-portraits by Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman, and Cindy Sherman in order to understand contested representations of gender. Interpreting women’s self-portraits as a re-visioning of the self within various spaces and scales acknowledges the possibility of resistance in everyday life. Reinterpreting “the female gaze” might provide us a way to look at self-portrait photography as a way to subvert the sexualized male gaze and contest complexities of power relations. Self-portraits as performance and remaking of the self could contribute to our understandings of female subjectivity. The act of placing the self outside the body with the photograph might allow for a new reading of gender binaries and what constitutes the self, in particular, the female self within a male dominated world.
Keywords:
Gender, feminist geography, subjectivity, self-portraits
Uploads
Conference Presentations by Chris Alic
Keywords:
Gender, feminist geography, subjectivity, self-portraits
Keywords:
Gender, feminist geography, subjectivity, self-portraits