women and the body

this isn't entirely true. there are also comments about her weight and whether the clothes she's wearing are liked. but these still stress her object status.

I think her expression is cool. usually you'd get the same old bored model stare. Why does it make me think of Jennifer Herrema?

xpost - yeah daria, thats sort of why i read the photo as drawing attention to the photo-shoot process. its very posed and doesn't try to efface that.

i didnt like the pic. but maybe im not supposed to. this is ok i guess

my main problem was that it was in black&white. this implies things that are totally odds with my outlook, if this pic was colour i think i would think of it differently, but the lack of colour alienated me immediately, it made me think it was trying for a 'something' i was not interested in, and could never relate to. faux-gravitas is something that irritates me, i always think, if the pic needs to be drained of colour to make an emotional impact, then it is not a good pic, and is relying too much on signifiers of importance i cannot grasp.

perhaps it is for a different audience to me, but the black&white strikes me as lazy and trite

i do think it would have been different. if i was just any x-random-girl i really think people would think more than twice before judging/objectifying them. because Chan Marshall, Musician is not the sister/daughter/best friend/whatever of anyone here (i'm assuming), that seems to make a difference..

I ask it b/c I never had before, which is strange 'cause I definitely did my share of complaining about objectification since I first self-identified as a feminist several years back. And yet.. strangely, it doesn't seem very important to me any more.

It doesn't connect or illuminate who Chan Marshall is (or what we know/think we know about her from previous interviews/articles/photos), but on the flipside it doesn't challenge popular conceptions of who she is (see above), because no popular conceptions exist.

The photograph, in effect, objectifies Chan Marshall more than any ILX pube-talk could ever do, she's used as a fashion model like any other. At least ILX pube-talk came in relation to who she is as a person or what ILX-in-generals thinks she is as a person.

The fact it's a published photograph makes it have a fame anyway, despite the fact she's famous - thus to my mind, if the same photo had been in the New Yorker but of an unknown woman, I am sure people would still make stupid comments about her pubic hair or whatever. Maybe not on this board, but I know for sure there are other places online where men and women both would be highly critical. I don't approve of the criticism, I just know it exists.

Gareth: your comment on it being a black and white pic interests me, because it brang to my mind the idea that when the human body is photographed in black and white, more compromising/erotic/etc poses can be "gotten away with" so to speak, as it seems thats percieved more as "art" (think Black&White magazine for example). Put it in colour and suddenly it's a trashy softcore porn shot, rather than art.

I'm not suggesting thats neccesarily my view, more that this perception exists, and is it possible thats why in this case B&W was used?

This and the linked threads are interesting and sad. She sounds like a really messed up woman, I know nothing about her.

One of the most obvious methods of objectification on ILM recently is to use a woman performer's appearance as an opportunity to denigrate her talents (see: every Calum thread ever). I think there's a lot more to it than just this though.

about four years ago i was quite idealistic and i stopped seeing objectification as important because i thought that women can and do subvert it. but maybe there are dominant positions to take when viewing a picture which are an obstacle to the success of this project. if so, how can they be tackled? should they be tackled?

There's always a choice of medium. Some would argue still photography is obsolete in the video age.

i'm not very good with definitions but here goes: the reduction of a representation of a human to something less than human, to something passive, to an object.

What is the "active performer" then? I mean, from the auidence : performer relationship; I certainly see some overlap in looking at a posed picture of Chan and listening to her cd. In both, she is calling the shots.

(I actually like that he uses a similar method for all of his subjects - be they heads of state or pop stars or coalminers.)

plus di:

the active performer is someone who is engaging with their representation - which is what i see chan as doing. my point is that few others perceived the photo that way.

why? i don't see this inherently at all, so i figure there's got to be something about cat power the "artist" that's elevating her above the average modeling shoot here.

jim isn't that just a reinvocation of of old expressionist fallacy re. "I YAM AN TRUE ARTISTE, therefore i will not be used."

I don't know how much that matters. Maybe the fact the audience doesn't know they are being manipulated says something about the art at hand. I think you're making a subjective judgement on an objective process, if that makes any sense. Can an audience react incorrectly?

i think a big point that's going unnoticed here is that this is gareth's personal preference in photography.

If that's gareth's point, why is he asking us to explain his preference to him?

just because someone sounds "depressed" or "manic" or "emotional" or "real" on record i just don't buy that they can't be bought and sold in the exact same way as someone who doesn't.

x-post: i have found the cat power music i've heard to be quite sexual in it's way.

X-post

Gareth asks us to explain everything to him, including why we are Angry.

i agree, but it seems a, well, strange way to sell her.

Yes, it's the continued paralyzing shyness/compulsive public performance thing she's milked her entire career. Maybe it's sincere, but as an excuse for prima donna behavior it's always irrationally bugged the shit out of me so I'm probably not the person to discuss this with.

Hmm.. I'm sorry in advance for being philosophically and grammatically lazy these days, and this isn't a critique of your definition - it's more that the entire uh, discourse surrounding 'objectification' (i.e. psychoanalytic terminology, subject/object, spectator, art as representation, does this all trace back to Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"?) seems entirely.. distant & incomprehensible to me.

I don't know, maybe it is a knee-jerk reaction vis-a-vis (excuse me for this) people who are jerks! Which is to say, if some folks are going to trash female artists based on their appearance, what are you going to do? Ignore them!

And re: current thread, I agree that Chan is engaging the photographer & this photo, to me, is much more striking than yr average fashion shoot, and believe me I'm a fashion mag junkie. it's her expression, as I think I mentioned above.

Obv. NO male stars have ever had/sold images, except all of them.

Despite the increasingly blurry lines between art and fashion, I think there's a big difference between this picture and any other model shoot I've seen of Chan's.

No, but do I expect other people to explain it to me? That part seems a bit odd. Instead of "let's discuss a topic," its like "let's discus a topic through my eyes".

Jess- I wish once again I could put my finger on *why*, but.. the photo here calls attention to the person, it's got us all discussing Chan, her image, her behavior, her music. Has anyone talked about the clothes? What about all those fab bangle bracelets she's wearing? If it were a fashion shoot, the point would be to highlight the clothes, not the subject.

Okay, gotta quit now.

Some would argue that anyone who would argue that an art form/method could become "obsolete" is a fool. (Not that you're arguing this, but the trend to render traditional methods in various areas - film and photography, primarily - deserves a response.)

Perhaps what IS oppressive upon being bombarded with so many airbrushed media images of beautiful people is the feeling one is obliged to try & measure up somehow. But I certainly don't think guys are totally exempt from this any more.

(I don't really feel like I can speak with authority on topics like this, in fact I feel horribly uneducated, but anyway...)

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bigron/sonic/moonpix2.jpg

because both are fixing her image and turning it into a commodity to be circulated and taken possession of (I think I prefer the above picture)(what does that say about me). John Berger's Ways of Seeing is the book I remember reading in school that made the case. It's an easy read, and I found it illuminating but it may be out of fashion now in academia. I don't know. It was written a long time ago and as James mentions, we're all a bit more self-aware of the relationship we have to images (we're here discussing it on a message board).

theoretically no, of course. but theoretically abstracting things is politically dodgy.

I don't think you can reduce b+w photography to an attempt at instant gravitas... not in this case especially. The thing about black and white photography is that it changes the focus of the pic - you concentrate on shading and depth and texture more than you do because the very nature of b+w photos tends to emphasise this. (Aside... Gareth, do you like any photos not taken in everyday natural light?)

Ironically, I didn't notice the pubic hair in the photo immediately, and had to read down the thread before I did. I suspect if the picture had been in colour they would have stood out A LOT more. So maybe the B+W is actually minimising the shock value in the image.

I don't think its possible to photograph anyone without objectifying them. The very nature of photography means that a pic of a boy or girl can be handed to a complete stranger who is then led to draw their own conclusions without having the slightest idea of the subject's characteristics as a human being. Is it the overtly sexual nature of this particular object that's troubling people?

vs: "If you need to be on drugs to appreciate the music then it is not good music", or indeed "if you need to be in a club to appreciate it then it is not good music".

Haha - it's photographic Geirism!

I think it's a great pic - it's Dizzee's pose which I think is marvellous, and the may it catches the shadow behind him. I suspect it would be a great pic if it were in colour, but draining Dizzee of colour and then putting him up against that artificial rancid yellow background increases the emotional impact hugely for me. More so than if he were sitting up against an everyday wall.

this may very well be the case, i doubt that i would like his other portraits either

I will admit that I get sort of annoyed when people decline to discuss art/music/whathaveyou on its own merits or without the benefit of first doing a little investigation.

perhaps, but also it can be valid and interesting to react purely to a piece without prior investigation, a purely visceral reaction, without the weight and baggage of the artist hanging over it.

(Aside... Gareth, do you like any photos not taken in everyday natural light?)

yes i do, it is not lack of colour in photography that irritates me, it is the intentional absence of colour. (ie, i do like photos taken in different lights, very much so, i dont then want that light removed).

again, its the conscious decision, the implication, the faux-gravitas that grates, i am not actually against black and white photography per se, for example, i like albert renger-patzschs work, i dont like avedons

but now its when avedon does yr photos...

What about false lighting?

pj shouts, tori fucks the piano bench, bjork wears swan dresses to the oscars, chan does this soft sell, im really shy, please love me schtick, and this photo is proof i think.

mr big photographer, wanna see my pubic hair, want me to connect to daddy dylan, want me to look thin and bedraggled so a million indie boys think they can take me home and take care of me, it will get me a new audience...sure sure sure.

its only slightly less pathetic then liz phair and the matrix.

Pubic hair also has a nostalgic air to it - everything's shaved and air-brushed these days and it seems like a conscious reaching for the past. For the same reason, pubic hair has lost a huge amount of its resonance in recent years, and just adds a dash more of slovenliness to the make-up, the cigarette etc. It's almost anti-sexual.

As for Stence's annoyance at art appreciated without the benefit of background knowledge - this just doesn't quite stand up. If there was a little annotation by the picture explaining the history and background to the artwork and the artist, then it could be appreciated on more levels, but art for art's sake *needs* to work when standing alone. If the background is part of the art, then it needs to be expressed to any viewer who is not entirely aware of this. Otherwise it becomes redundant or pseudy.

btw strongo, i thought i made it perfectly clear in the first post that i don't believe in inherent interpretations. the problem i stated so eolquently is how do we overcome dominant readings.

is it surprising that the hip early adapters of ilx love it ?

I think that's partly my defense mechanism in trying to keep "art" free of a lot of politcal and cultural noise. I want it to be straight from create to react, without the rest of the world inbetween as a filter.

But maybe an audience can react incorrectly. Were Chan up on stage plaing piano and people started yelling "show us your tits!" then they are reacting to her, but (probably) not to her music. Then I can see how objectifing the performer's body can get in the way.

I do think it is more likely that there's always interplay going on between the performer and everything that makes up their physical appearence + their performance. What makes it difficult is any audience reaction has 5000000 factors to it.

& last night, my gf after seeing the photo “wow, that’s something……i can finally see her face for once”

"See you looking through me
Like you've unzipped the zipper
You hold the big picture so well
Can't you see that we're going to hell"

but Mark, ppl who are reading the New Yorker are expected to know who Avedon is, his background, etc. Anything aimed at a target audience makes certain implicit assumptions about knowledge possessed by the reader/consumer and therefore explanations are not needed.

This breaks down a bit with the NYorker when they start discussing pop (see the Academia in Music thread on ILM) They seem to assume that more background is required there than if they're discussing say, a new book by Irving or a recording of Mozart or a matisse exhibition etc. All these would be things that you are expected to know abt as a reader of the mag.

in the pic she's doing many contradictory things at once: smoking a cigarette, jeans almost off (= "i just had sex") but then she feels the need to cover her breasts? dude, we just had sex with you! maybe it's because her lover (= you and me, or whoever's looking at the photo) has brung out the camera... she's like hey, that was personal, don't document this you silly billy. but her coy refusal to participate is undermined cause we take the picture ANYWAY.

Di looking at the photo what agency do you imagine she has here? what active performance do you see?

i think it's really silly just to toss out backgroiund as part of the armoury — but it doesn't trump all arguments ever, by any means (not least because it can detract from and dilutes the force of the actual THING YOU ARE NOW ADDRESSING) (ie what if the artist just now totally changed subjects and modes, and you are persistently reading his/her current stuff as a continuation when its conceived as a breach blah blah)

tracer i totally didn't read the picture the way you did ie as post coital. i just thought a lot of things about it were strange. you don't hold a cigarette between your thumb and index finger, and not in that direction. and as for the way she holds the t shirt over herself, the way she holds it doesn't suggest "shyly clutching t shirt to chest after sex" to me, it says "look my t shirt is a bob dylan t shirt". the fact that she isn't actually wearing the t shirt and the jeans are showing a faint whiff of muff is suggestive of porn, yeah, but porn is generally very different. porn is a contrived situation where women are supposed to appear in their "natural" state (requires a total suspension of disbelief for someone), its a fantasy that we are supposed to believe in because its "happening before our eyes". the agency chan has - to me - is that of subverting that convention and confounding the viewer (obv meaning me), with an unnatural pose and a somewhat wry grin. thus she is actively performing a subversion. (i have a very broad definition of performance, to me wherever there is human interaction there is performance - but we don't always consciously perform, we don't always think about and question what we are doing, a necessary requirement for active performance)

i probably don't need to state this for the millionth time but that is MY reading of the photo based on knowing fuck all about art and nothing about the new yorker or the photographer. what she was actually trying to do may have been quite different.

i'm really happy about the diverse contributions to this thread. makes it clear that it IS possible to interpret a picture in ways other than the obvious.

Uh Mark I think I spent almost the entire thread posting about how Avedon is not a fashion photographer, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

Thanks.

No one's directly stated that Chan and the photographer are joint authors of this photograph. It's about them both.

First thing I noticed is how unlike the other pictures I've seen of her it is. I wouldn't have known it was her.

She looks ten years older. The cigarette, jewelery and haircut contribute far more to an unwholesomeness than the low riding jeans do.

To me she looks like a Rolling Stones groupie from the 70s, or what I think one would look like.

Other people have mentioned that context is important, the fact that it's in a certain publication and by a certain photographer, but can someone answer the vital question, was it the only photo of her that went with the article? Or was there a more 'usual' representation of her there too? To us who've seen her before that picture will have a totally different impact to those who see her here for the first time.

TLML said:
. am i to deduce that no matter HOW women fuck with the conventions of "erotic" photogrpahy/film/whatever, Woman will always be The Object? (serious question - i'm not decided on this issue at all and probably never will be)

Surely in this case Chan is aking that we pay particular attention to an object, a photograph, rather than her inner person. She dressed and posed in a certain way for this photo but I bet she didn't adopt the persona for her day to day life.

In that case, I wonder did Chan realise that the readers of the New Yorker would end up wihth a totally different impression of her than people who knew something about her before?

TLML said:

does it have to be so clearcut? why must she be either object or chan marshall?

I don't think it's clear cut at all. Even dressed up we know she's not really the character she's playing, but someone who has chosen to dress up like that.

I'm never sure what people mean exactly by 'the object'. TLML, do you mean just how she looks?
Or looks + voice ?
Or looks + voice + actions + everything else externally measurable ?

Also why, when none of us can read minds or really know what another is at core, is it women that people say are objectified?

Why this insistence—this hope—that Avedon's "not a fashion photographer?" What would change about The Lady Miss Lurex's question were this assertion true? What would change about your answers? What difference does it make for you? Anyway, since you asked:

http://www.6bears.com/pirelli5.jpg
http://member.hitel.net/~k2hdd/adjani69.jpg
http://www.omero.it/images/avedon.JPG
http://djuna.nkino.com/christy/86/86-10-01.jpg
http://www.schirmer-mosel.de/bildkat/7VBASchifferMontage.JPG

I agree with you, amateurist. When I look back at the Cat Power photo I realize it's far more elastic and playful in my memory that it actually is.

Huh?

I never said Avedon wasn't a "fashion photographer."

I asked if Avedon had done anything but his (really fucking boring most of the time) white-background/B&W/no-props/large-format work. That's all I asked.

Avedon and Avedon's style was being discussed. I asked a question about Avedon - because all of his work I've ever seen was the same style.

I. Asked. A. Fucking. Question.

That's it.

Where you suddenly think I've argued that Avedon's not a fashion photographer and whether or not he is changes anything, I have no clue.

Did it relate to Richard Avedon and Richard Avedon's style, which is/was being discussed? Yes.

As to that whole attributing motives and beliefs to me that don't exist thang. Did you just have me confused with someone else or what? Was it perhaps just a knee-jerk reaction?

hstencil was adamant that Avedon's not a fashion photographer in the sense that most people recognize. You yourself questioned it. Why? What difference would it make to whether Chan is an "active performer of her body" in Avedon's photo of her? The very concern with Avedon's lineage and affiliation indicates to me that she is NOT an active performer of her body here for many people, since Avedon's hand&3151;and what kind of photog he may or may not be, etc—is overshadowing Chan's considerably.

Gee, my response re:pubes couldn't have been sarcastic, could it?

You yourself questioned it.

WHERE?

This has been the point. I never questioned Avedon's status as a "fashion photographer." Nowhere.

Even if his sole work was in the no-props/B&W/large-format/white background style - that wouldn't preclude him from being a fashion photographer.

I never said he was or wasn't, because he is a fashion photographer (sometimes) and isn't a fashion photographer (sometimes).

It's silly to place photographers as any one genre. Most work in multiple places - portraiture, pure fashion, editorial, on and on and on. Was Cartier-Bresson (to choose a famous example) a photojournalist? Documentarian? Street photographer? Portraitist? I'm sure we could find some architectural work in his negatives.

Was Richard Avedon responsible for that Nike advert with the sprinter in high heels?

WHY though? i really am curious. i mean, i guess i can see a certainly relaxed nature but models are trained to look any damn way at any damn time, so i'm not quite sure if they couldn't pull off the same relaxed vibe. [strongo hulkington]

portraiture seems to be about documentation while in fashion photography there seems to be room for role playing. if in art photography the photographer's job is to capture the essence of a person or situation on film, then how much room does the subject have for performance, other than being herself (which could be an art in itself)?

the active performer is someone who is engaging with their representation - which is what i see chan as doing. my point is that few others perceived the photo that way. [di]

I don't know how much that matters. Maybe the fact the audience doesn't know they are being manipulated says something about the art at hand. I think you're making a subjective judgement on an objective process, if that makes any sense. Can an audience react incorrectly? [bnw]

i think bnw has an interesting point here (if i understand him). fashion photography as art photography seems built on this illusion. except that the weird thing about the photo is that he has made her look old with the make up around her eyes and the rolling stones groupie paraphernalia. so then you get to thinking how much of an illusion is her indie girl persona? i'm thinking of the photo that someone posted on a different thread of her with a laptop on her bed composing songs.

mei, yeah, i thought the interesting thing was how that interacts with how she is presented/presents herself in the photo, what it says about photography as a medium, etc.