Photographic Gaze

The nature of the photographic gaze is in my opinion a mirror / window, my gaze as the photographer, combined with the audiences gaze as they are looking at my work. My photographic gaze is one of exploration, and communication. I am female, and so from Brights works that would affect my gaze, however, I didn’t feel that was the case in my own work, but it’s important, to be aware of any unconscious influences, in ones practice.

We have been looking at gender and disability issues in an attempt to understand how the body is represented to us, and explore the nature in general of the photographic gaze, as well as using this to specifically explore our own photographic gaze.

The body is often depicted within the photographic gaze, the physical body is not an important part of my own work, although it makes a good contrast for my understanding and influence, instead, my work could be described as the essence of a person, or body of people. The body is depicted in many ways in the photographic gaze, but I feel it is fair to say that overall it is displayed, however well masked, within our cultural and stereotypical boundaries, in relation to gender, disability, and age, it seems almost impossible to escape these, within the production and understanding of work. Images of the body surround is, in advertising, news, and fine art, to name just a few genres. Within these boundaries, I think it is fair to say that as a culture, we do see certain groups of people s inferior, and this is something my work is trying to combat.

The work created by my photographic gaze, can be viewed and interpreted, on different levels, as fine art, documentary, and commentary, the audiences interpretation of my gaze and therefore where it fits within contemporary practice, depends on where it is displayed to influence how the audience interpret, and then how deeply they want to explore the images, this is because my work communicates on different levels: the aesthetic level, and then the deeper commentaries within the work.

My work could be interpreted as I said by its aesthetic qualities, which the audience are initially greeted with. Then there are three different audiences which could interpret my work, the communities, which have felt the majority of the changes by the migration, the migrants themselves, and then the communities, which have not seen as much migration, there interpretation of my work will be different, based on their cultural experience, understanding and stereotypes, I am hoping that my wok will raise awareness and challenge these.