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Writer's pictureElizabeth Medling

The female gaze

[image: "the honeymoon suite"-Juno calypso in Girl on Girl, Charlotte Jansen 2017]



To me the female gaze is a mix of feminism and activism but like all genres of photography,

and culture the female gaze has its troupes such as self-staging, the use of the front facing camera, ambiguity, natural lighting (or fake set-ups), self-portraiture, a series on individual images-better for the narrative, introducing “feminine” techniques, an emphasis on community and being familiar with the subjects.

Just like everything else the genre has some misconceptions and here are a few: the female gaze is not feminism, but they work hand-in-hand. It is not a political gesture, the female gaze is relevant to all, not just women, you can identify as what you want and still possess the female gaze, women of course make sexist work too. Finally, the female gaze is not only just concerned about how women’s bodies are represented through imagery.

There are many ways as artists, to reverse the gaze we can; investigate ourselves, get more female photographers to photograph men - in a way exploiting them, flip expectations of relationships, gender and other factors. Show men in more tender, romanticized ways to show their vulnerability and demonstrate the power switch showing women have control.

I am sure at this point the question on your minds is do we need the female gaze? In short terms yes. It is a progression, it’s forcing society forward to be more open and for all genders to have control furthermore, breaking the taboo of showing what’s hidden, visibility is power. If we did not have it there would be no shift or change and an increase in pain, more so than joy or pleasure.

There is so much evidence of the lack of the female gaze that could easily be changed such as: the number of women taking commercial images, today it is low, only 5%. Female photographers are poorly represented in commercial galleries. There is a lack of women representation throughout history due to heterosexual men, oppression in the myths and violence against women and like I have said previously visibility is power.

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