Elephants in the Room | Symposium | Feminist Avant Garde of the 1970s | The Photographers’ Gallery
On Saturday (19th November 2016) I spent the day at The Photographers’ Gallery joining in on the Elephants in the Room symposium that was held to discuss arguments and themes in feminism using the work from Feminist Avant Garde of the 1970s as a base for discussion.
As part of my degree show back in June I held a symposium for my work Privacy Lust to create discussion around online dating, data privacy, surveillance and feminism. It was a small and intimate event, so it was really great to have the opportunity to go to a larger symposium from such a large and influential photographic institution.
The symposium was introduced by organiser of the event and Head of Education at The Photographers’ Gallery, Janice McLaren. Once we had an introduction, each of the discussion group leaders were introduced. Each facilitator introduced what works within the Feminist Avant Garde of the 1970s work they would be using for the discussion.
For the morning session, I joined Othello De’Souza-Hartley’s group as he would be discussing Lili’s Dujourie’s work, Untitled [1977].
In this piece we assume that the subject we are seeing is a naked woman, however, on closer inspection we realise that the subject is a nude male. This raised some interesting points of discussion, such as why do we assume it is a woman? Is it down to form or is it the composition of the image? It also raised some interesting debates about the female gaze, or the existence of the female gaze. As we discussed, the female gaze perhaps does not belong to women, as it can often just be females trying to emulate what the male sees through the male gaze. Are we taking ownership of this gaze? I know that if someone were to ask me to take an image of a man that would encapsulate the female gaze, my mind would instantly think of references of how women have categorically been photographed, objectified and have had their naked bodies achieved by men. Do I really own a ‘female gaze’ or am I still using prescriptions of the ‘male gaze’ handed down to me by men?
We also talked about the importance of gender in the photographs, and that it becomes a more interesting image on the realisation that it is a man in the space under soft lighting. For me, however, it became not just about the gender of the body, but that it was an ‘art’ body. It is a very particularly type of physique that is so often modelled in the art world. I feel as though we are often presented with these very translucent skinned and slender built bodies as the subjects of artwork, whether this be through self portraiture of through choice of subject. The work then became about the build of the man, that whether if he was larger or more muscular, how would we then perceive this as viewers? How important is this element? [I’m aware that I’m bringing up quite a few hefty arguments here without delving into them - I will likely be doing this over the next few months but would not want to get into this on ~Tumblr~ (or any platform for that matter) without proper structure and reference]
Another discussion that was brought forward was how men are so often painted or photographed either in action or sleeping/dead. This wasn’t something I had given too much thought to previously but hit me quite hard. Gaps in the archive of male photography is something that I’m currently really interested in so this discussion was extremely beneficial to my research.
The second talk that I attended was facilitated by Gisela Tores, and she spoke about Ana Mendieta’s Glass on Body Imprints (1972/1977) exhibited as part of the show.
Mendieta’s story was not something that I was familiar with prior to the symposium. Her story was incredibly central to her work and her approach as an artist. Some of the themes that we discussed were, again, around the gaze. By pushing her body up against the glass and facing the camera so openly, she subverts the gaze. For me, I read the images as though she could be peering through the exhibition glass at us, rather than the audience viewing at her. It would be as though she is staring back at the predominantly older, white and wealthy gallery viewers.
The set of images also become a really interesting view of her face as though it was a sculpture. By seeing the face in close-up, we view each section of the face and break it down. Why pressing her face against the glass, her sculpted face also starts to look scientific. I felt as though her features were being placed into a petri dish to be inspected as we view particles under a microscope.
Her Cuban heritage is something we also discussed in the symposium. She presses her features against the glass and enlarges her lips, nose and mouth. This could be her drawing attention to her race and Cuban features as she has been “ripped from her home” and lives in 1970s Iowa, alluding to her ‘otherness’.
I would have really loved to of seen the contact sheets of this piece, I do wonder whether they would have revealed more about her relationship to her tutor/lover who was behind the camera. I would have been fascinated to know which images she felt had worked and why she selected the ones she did, also to discuss the order of the images.
Once we had finished our discussion groups we rejoined all together to talk about some of the main points that were raised about each piece. I was particularly grateful for this as I would have loved to go to the discussions for all of the pieces so it was nice to hear about the other themes being talked about during the day.
I was really impressed by this event and I would be really keen to attend any other symposiums that The Photographers’ Gallery holds. I definitely picked up some great ideas for how to hold any future symposiums that I would organise, I would love to find out more about how TPG put this one together.
To read more about the event, click here.
To see more about the Feminist Avant Garde of the 1970s exhibition, click here.
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