My sister and I had one Barbie that we shared. The point being, I had seen a naked Ken, but not in the privacy of my own home. I didn’t personally own a Ken doll (my sister and I were not allowed to have a Ken or any male doll whose clothes were not permanently adhered to its body). Mannequins in the 1960s looked like Barbie and Ken. The pre-free-love, early 60s days, that is.īack then, mannequins were nothing like ours of the present day. She demanded to see the manager and then shamed him into putting some clothes on the mannequins.Īh…the 1960s. ![]() My mother pushed through the front doors as I trailed behind. “It’s a disgrace!”įrankly, I was more bothered by the fact that one of the mannequins was missing a hand and the other one, an arm. “Would you look at that!” she said, staring at the window. There were two mannequins in the window, naked as jaybirds, to use her expression. When I was about seven years old, my mother and I were walking home from the supermarket when we passed W.T. And so anatomically correct!Ĭue the Twilight Zone – doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo… One mannequin, clothed (in dressy-casual as if pretending to be off to a breakfast meeting). It was a window in Bergdorf’s, after all.īut, easily distracted as I am, my attention was then directed across the street where I noticed this bacchanalian assembly: ![]() the smug indifference of the other two still standing), the runaway hat, the neon-lit map of a flattened world…right out of a Helmut Newton photo. ![]() The artful scramble of wire, the costumes, the drama: a juxtaposition of tragedy and schadenfreude (prostrate mannequin vs. Groggy commuters flooded 57th Street.Īt first glance, the scene behind the plate glass, as it seemed to me, had been intentionally staged by some edgy window designers. The front doors of Bergdorf’s were still in lock-down. (Seemingly oblivious to their fallen comrade in a state of collapse before their toe-less feet). An Analysis of the Politics of Representation promotes a discussion of fashion iconography within gender and media research.Look at us, they seem to be saying. By engaging critically with the representation of the female body and how meanings are mediated between producers and viewers, 'In Search of the Female Gaze: Women as Practitioners of Fashion' Photography. French feminists Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous are also of great influence in this thesis, as well as Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. As a foundation to my argument, I draw a parallel between the depictions of women in film studies and in art history, taking in consideration the discursive fabric of theorists such as Laura Mulvey, John Berger, Mary Ann Doane, Linda Nochlin, Rosalind Gill and Rosemary Betterton. A central idea of this paper is to emphasise that femininity is a social construct and to present the manner in which the female gaze eschews its conventional stereotypes. Additionally, through a descriptive approach, it intends to showcase fashion photography as a vehicle to debate gender and sexuality within patriarchy. The aim of this paper is to explore the underlying meanings behind traditional representations of women in the fashion photography milieu and to evidence how fashion photography mirrors culture, thus carrying symbolic value and ideological codes. 'In Search of the Female Gaze: Women as Practitioners of Fashion Photography' uses the imagery of photographers Helmut Newton, Miles Aldridge, Deborah Turbeville, Corinne Day and Maisie Cousins as case studies in order to investigate the nuances between the way men and women look at and photograph women. It incorporates a multidisciplinary theoretical framework, embracing feminist and psychoanalytical discourse and semiotics. This thesis examines the female gaze in conjunction with fashion photography.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |