Charlotte Sometimes

Tag: Academic Photography

Male photographers and girl models
“I am arranging a series of editorial/lifestyle shoots rather like a day in the life of a model. Wanting to shoot some boudoir lifestyle images and I want to know where you can buy storage boxes etc for keeping all your jewellery, necklaces, earings etc. Every female has them on their make up table or beside table. I am wanting to recreate the real effect of a girl’s boudoir as studios don’t have these on their sets. Just trying to make it as realistic as possible.”

“I find it worrying that some people seem more interested in the girls, the gear and the settings and seem less interested in looking at a great picture and admiring it for what it is and trying to develop the skill to learn how to create that yourself.”

“I never ever ask a girl to go past the agreed levels.”

I find it worrying that lots and lots of male photographers refer to female models as girls.

I’m a stickler for using the correct words for things. Why use twenty words when you can use one? And yes, sometimes I make mistakes and get things wrong, but I do try to get it right.

So in the spirit of discovery and exploration, lets determine what the word girl actually means.

When you define:girl in Google, you get this:
noun: girl; plural noun: girls

1.

a female child.

“girls go through puberty earlier than boys”

a person’s daughter.

“he was devoted to his little girl”

2.

a young or relatively young woman.

“I haven’t got the time to meet girls”

a young woman of a specified kind or having a specified job.

“a career girl”

informal

women who mix socially.

“I look forward to having a night with the girls”

a person’s girlfriend.

“his girl eloped with an accountant”

dated

a female servant.
So the first definition that Google offers us is that of ‘a female child’. Well, I can understand that some photographers do photograph female children, I have done so myself in the past. The law defines a child as being under the age of 18 in the UK, just so that we’re clear on what we’re talking about. The law also forbids making indecent images of children, and the quotes above generally come from people who are more interested in the ‘indecent’ side of photography than the pure and decent alternative. (NB – I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with indecent images. Only yesterday was I shooting dirty sex pictures of a hot guy.) In short, there’s everything wrong with most amateur photographers talking about photographing ‘girls’ in a sexually appealing way.

The second definition gets a little bit more tricky. It defines ‘girl’ in the more colloquial sense of being a young woman. This is where it gets more tricky. I still object to older male photographers referring to the models that they photograph as ‘girls’. Here is why.

Neatly and succinctly Google has laid out the reasons why this is problematic to me.
- informal
  
  women who mix socially.
  
  “I look forward to having a night with the girls”
- a person’s girlfriend.
  
  “his girl eloped with an accountant”
- dated
  
  a female servant.
First up we have the informal usage of ‘women who mix socially’.We’ve all heard women say ‘I’m going out with the girls’. Well, some women. Not all of us will say that to be honest but that’s a minor point.

When a woman calls her friends ‘her girls’, it’s a bit when people from a certain subculture use the N word. Or when my gay friends call each others fags. It’s a word that – even without many people realising – has been reclaimed for this kind of use. If you’re a member of another demographic, I’m not quite sure that you have the authority to use those words in those contexts. It’s a bit like women who have recently reclaimed the words slut and cunt – except ‘girl’ was reclaimed in a much more organic process that wasn’t overtly associated with feminist ideologies.

The two bullet points that follow are examples of how ‘girl’ is generally used (and intended) when it falls out of the mouth of almost everyone else. ‘His girl’ – quite a dated phrase nowadays, I think we tend to think of 1950s Americans when we think of this way of speaking. However it’s a pervasive attitude within society, that a girl belongs to a man. Without doing large amounts of research I’d speculate that it comes out of a time when underage girls were married to older men and treated like property – so the phrase ‘his girl’ would have been accurate at a certain time and place. That usage has followed through and in the photographic community we have photographers extending that subconscious meaning and referring to models as ‘their models’.

The second bullet point makes the point that female servants have always historically been referred to as ‘girls’. Male photographers hiring female models? Servants? All a bit too close to the bone if you ask me. There’s no denying the fact that lots of amateur male photographers do hire young, female models as a kind of weird sexual fantasy thing which makes the context of the word ‘girl’ when you know it’s historical precedence of a name for a servant rather creepy.

You see the problem is that language has baggage. Sometimes it’s good baggage – associating gay guys with a happy and carefree lifestyle isn’t necessarily a negative thing. But using the term ‘girl’ for a grown woman (even if she is ‘young’) comes with it’s fair share of negative baggage that perhaps we need to be a bit more careful about using.

I have no doubt that most male photographers don’t have this kind of intention at the forefront of their mind when they’re referring to young female models as girls. Lots of guys would be utterly horrified to think that they were involved in a turn of language that has it’s roots in the systematic oppression of women. However lets look at the culture surrounding the people that make these statements.

I’m talking about quite a specific community of photographers here. In a tongue in cheek way I’m going to write the hashtag #NotAllPhotographers, but I’ve written about this particular community before, when I discussed on this blog how not all naked chicks are art.

They’re a self-referential group of photographers. They look insularly to their own kind of inspiration and seem to be immune to inspiration from the world outside. With that attitude comes the fact that they also seem to be immune to getting with the times and understanding the implications of their actions.

The work that they create is unanimously said (by the members of this community) to glorify women. To celebrate women. To show the beauty of women (NB – interestingly you do actually get some gay photographers who photograph men in this objectifying way). It’s all supposedly about elevating women onto this pedestal and showing them as a beautiful object.

Oh fuck, there’s that word – object.

Objectifying people is problematic.
May 12, 2016
Wikipedia hack-a-thon : Non-male Photographers

So… after reading some articles in class yesterday and hearing about a tutor’s experience with a women in architecture hack-a-thon, I’m curious to know if I could organise one for women photographers.

This post is serving as little more than a bookmark to make me do something about it.

November 27, 2015
Challenging the photographic industry to be better

It didn’t take me long to realise that the photography industry wasn’t a great place for everyone to inhabit. I’m not going to start recounting tales of everything I’ve ever found sexist, but you’re safe to assume that there’s a fair amount.

Many of my experiences with photography led me down the path that has ended up with me writing a dissertation on feminist, queer, and black approaches to art. The biggest one was obviously my choice to be a writer. I remember my ex saying to me something along the lines of ‘you’re just one person, you can’t change the industry’ and I thought ‘I bloody well can – but I have to be the person who is telling others how to do things’. The last three years I’ve spent working towards the idea that I can really be a force for good within the photography industry. And the last two have been spent on my degree, learning about how to apply theories to real life situations.

It’s an unusual career path, I admit. Most people work to earn money. And most people interested in photography want to be photographers. I discovered very early on that my heart wasn’t in a business where your sales tactics are worth as much (or more) than your talent.

So instead of focussing on being a better photographer I focussed on understanding why people took pictures. And why people want pictures. And why the photography industry is the way that it is. And it’s fascinating – I promise you.

The last year or so has really solidified what I want to do with my ability to write. I want to change peoples outlooks and make the industry a better place. I want to give a voice to those who don’t feel able to speak up – that can be one of the biggest challenges.

The first time I spoke up I had nothing to lose. About three years ago I wrote to Black+White Photography Magazine to complain about inequality. They had what they proclaimed as being “The Nude Issue” – except really it was “The Naked Lady Issue”. I seem to remember that they had one man featured in the entire issue, and he wasn’t even completely nude. I never got an answer back, of course, they didn’t even print me in the letters page. I didn’t let it bother me, I just kept on trying to make my voice heard.

I got into hot water later when I decided to challenge a troll on a modeling site forum and this time I lost something. He made a rape joke about women in India. I (and others) called him out on such gross and inappropriate behaviour. We both got banned from the forum for a few days. I didn’t think that this was enough – the rape joke remained on the forum for anyone to see. I wrote about my displeasure on social media. The site introduced a new rule that you can’t complain on social media and I lost my account as a result. In a way I think this was a blessing in disguise. I took some time out to think about what I really wanted to shoot and how I was shooting it. I came to the realisation that that wasn’t a crowd I really wanted to hang out with because it was pretty sexist and oppressive. I could do better – if I wanted to shoot models. To be honest I’ve not shot a model for years, I started to find other kinds of photography more interesting.

More recently I was told by Mike, my editor at the magazine, that he’d gone to a conference on landscape photography only to be told by the keynote (and very well respected) speaker that there were no women doing landscape photography. Of course he Googled, found some awesome photographers on the first and second pages, and we contacted a couple and set up a whole issue of the magazine devoted to landscape photography – including the rather excellent Lynne. She wrote a blog that caught our eye about being a woman who does landscape photography so we interviewed her and it went down a storm. Being able to talk openly about some of the issues that women faced in the industry was genuinely exciting.

And then of course, there was the Brett Florens debacle two days ago. I’ve already blogged about that. In a conversation on Facebook someone asked ‘how do I challenge these people?’ and I realised that not everyone is lucky enough to have gone down the educational path that I have.

I realised that people within the photography industry don’t always have the framework needed to confront people head on. They don’t know how to say ‘I think you’re wrong’ because they don’t yet know how to articulate why someone is wrong. One of the major problems is that the person speaking up is often one of the oppressed groups, and the person they are challenging is part of a dominant group. This means that speaking up and articulating is even harder – because you’re not just challenging one person, you’re challenging the status quo.

So last night I bought a domain name. It’s IntersectionalPhotography.com. And I hope that I can fill it with useful resources for people within the photographic industry to try and make our industry a better place to be. Everything from how to deal with sexist misconceptions to how to treat an unconventional client with respect, understanding, and compassion.

I don’t know if it’ll work. But I feel like I have to try.

June 25, 2015
Is Feminist Methodology still relevant in History of Art today?

Since I’ve now had my results back from my second year at university, I can post the final essay for my Culture, Gender and Sexuality module. I got 80% overall in this module – 70% is required for achieving a 1st.

Enjoy!

Is Feminist Methodology still relevant in History of Art today?

There is little doubt that the New Art Histories revolutionised the way that many art historians saw the world and participated in art historical academia in the 1970s (Rees and Borzello, 1986a, p. 3). The term ‘The New Art Histories’ came into use because of the book of the same name which tried to summarise emerging methodologies in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Rees and Borzello, 1986b). Other authors interpreted the term as an umbrella phrase for critical theory (Jõekalda, 2013, p. 2) and most would agree that the term the New Art Histories cover political, feminist, psychoanalytical and theoretical approaches (Fernie, 1995, p. 19). This poststructuralist approach marked an important shift away from art as objects and focussed instead on social context rather than concepts such as connoisseurship and biography. In this essay I will focus on how feminist art history methodologies do not address queer artists and artworks adequately, however it should also be considered that non-Caucasian, non-Western, and disabled people are also not addressed by mainstream feminist theory either – amongst other personhood statuses. The word queer itself is complex but for the purpose of this essay I will be using it to represent non-default gender, sex and sexuality.

Women were often left out of the traditional art historical canon and the New Art Histories enabled feminist art historians to rethink the past. Initially there was a push to rediscover women artists and attempt to place them within the traditional canon. This was primarily achieved by questioning assumptions about the difference between art and craft – many feminist art historians at this time believed that these definitions of art and craft were one of the primary reasons for women’s art being seen as inferior (Fernie, 1995, p. 20). However this approach relied on traditional canonical and biographical methodologies and the late 1970s saw a move by feminist theorists to challenging the discipline of History of Art itself. Academics began to suggest that merely inserting women into history was not the same as writing women’s history (Fox-Genovese, 1982, p. 6) and Griselda Pollock put forward the idea that women’s studies were not about women but rather the social systems that allow and maintain the dominance of men over women (Pollock, 1988, p. 1). One of the formative essays for feminist art history was Linda Nochlin’s ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ (Nochlin, 1978) which warned against the idea of simply trying to name women artists who might be considered ‘good’ and insert them into the traditional male-dominated canon.

Feminist methodologies, especially when combined with Marxist theories, gave academics a powerful and alternative way of looking at both history and the present, yet feminist methodologies as applied to the history of art have remained reasonably static in their approach. While feminism as a political movement has moved on with successive waves of ideologies, feminist methodology for history art often still works from the same seminal texts (such as Nochlin’s) that broke the original ground.

In many respects feminist methodologies fit neatly into hegemonic, patriarchal culture – as much as their practitioners would like to suggest that they now champion intersectionality (McCall, 2005, p. 1771). They support the notion of a bigender society and specifically exclude those who exist outside of the gender paradigm that society currently uses to view the world and write history. Feminist art historical methodologies may well be the fight against the male dominated view of the history of art, but when viewing the history of art as a queer participant these methodologies only serve to reinforce the patriarchal structure and act as another hegemonic barrier that needs to be removed before a queer history can be composed. Traditional and New art histories combined act as a complete patriarchal version of the histories of art, a history that could potentially be rewritten by a new queer methodology.

Introducing queer methodologies to the history of art is unlikely to be as simple as just viewing the world from a queer point of view. Queer methodology must be counterhegemonic in its nature, allowing new paradigms to be enacted. It is not simply a case of rewriting the history of art from a gay or lesbian perspective, or even a transgender perspective. In order to create a truly queered history of art the bigender paradigm should not be used and another must be found; otherwise queer methodologies will become just another pillar that supports the dominant patriarchal norm by acting in support of male masculinities and female femininities (Halberstam, 1998, pp. 3–4). Stephen Bann’s suggestion that a new cultural critique can gain strength from the fact that old positions have already run their course is as relevant now as it was when he discussed the idea almost thirty years ago (Bann, 1986, p. 19) and so queer theory must learn from the limitations faced today by feminist theory. As McCall discuses in a paper on intersectionality, feminist researches are already very aware of the limitations of using gender as an analytical category (McCall, 2005, p. 1772).

‘Feminine success is always measured by male standards’ claims Halberstam (2011, p. 4), and so by acting outside of the expected standards we can relieve ourselves of the pressure to conform. Some ‘renegade’ feminists, Jack Halberstam argues, have addressed that failing might be better than success while in pursuit of the counterhegemonies and this is a lesson that could potentially be learned by any new approach to the history of art. For instance lesbians do not conform to the expected heterosexual framework so they therefore fall outside of patriarchal societies and could redefine what gender means to them (Halberstam, 2011, p. 4). This way of thinking allows us to begin to construct a different gender narrative for the viewing of the history of art, by enabling those outside of the patriarchal hegemony to apply their own definitions of gender and sexuality. However most feminist history of art is largely unconcerned with sexuality or gender-fluidity and therefore this is not a tool that would be used by most feminist art historians. In most feminist art history the assumption is that the artist is heterosexual, white and often middle-class; there is no discourse available for the kind of alternative femininities and masculinities that Halberstam addresses in their text on female masculinity (Halberstam, 1998).

Some feminist academics have begun to offer a kind of queer methodology – although still under the banner of feminism. The idea of introducing sex, gender and sexuality to feminist approaches is proposed by Mimi Marinucci (Marinucci, 2010, p. 105) and can be seen as part of the wider movement of mainstream feminism towards an intersectional approach. In some ways this approach works very well – there is real solidarity between the experiences of many women and those who are LGBT* (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) due to the basic understanding of what it is like to be born into a state of patriarchal oppression. However there is also tension between the feminist and queer movements and as Marinucci points out there has been a history of feminist studies showing bias against lesbian women, gay men, minority sexualities and transgender people (Marinucci, 2010, p. 106).

It could be suggested that art history is now in a state of post-feminism; where equality has begun to be achieved in academic writing and galleries. Certainly the large art institutions in the United Kingdom, such as the Tate, have no problems with showing large retrospectives dedicated to twentieth-century women artists. Marlene Dumas (Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden, no date) and Sonia Delaunay (The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay, no date) are currently showing major retrospectives at the Tate Modern in London, Cathy Wilkes is showing at the Tate Liverpool (Cathy Wilkes, no date) and the Tate Britain has hosted retrospectives of well known women artists such as Susan Hiller (Susan Hiller, no date) and has a Barbara Hepworth exhibition opening in June 2015 (Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World, no date). I am aware that naming the exhibitions being held of women artists pushes me precariously close to being guilty of what Nochlin warned against, however it does certainly appear that women artists now have a roughly equal number of major exhibitions as artists who are men when considering twentieth and twenty-first century art. Most feminist art historians can be categorised as using one of the other approaches to art history (such as connoisseurship, biography or iconography to name just a few) so it could be suggested that feminist art historians should just continue to work under those banners rather than identifying as feminists since the feminist art historian label seems to be no longer required.

Marunucci presents the idea that queer feminism provides a new direction for feminism as a critical perspective. Introducing questions of sexuality into feminist art history would greatly increase the scope of the methodology. According to the label on the front of the book Art & Queer Culture it is ‘the first book to focus on the criticism and theory regarding queer visual art’ (Lord and Meyer, 2013). If this statement is indeed true it means that no feminist (or any other) art historian has been addressing the criticism and theory of queer art. This raises the question – if feminism was truly interested in any sexuality, sex or gender other than heterosexual women who were identified as women at birth, wouldn’t this book have been written years or perhaps even decades ago?

Even if feminist art historians use approaches borrowed from gay and lesbian studies, this does not go far enough. A relatively recent biography of photographer Claude Cahun (Doy, 2007) is a good example of why feminist approaches are often inadequate even when combined with gay and lesbian studies. Cahun was a photographer who lived from 1894 to 1954. Originally identified as female at birth, Cahun had romantic relationships with women and in 1915-1916 began using the gender-ambiguous name Claude Cahun instead of the assigned birth name of Lucy Schwob (Claude Cahun – Chronology, no date). Most of Cahun’s body of photographic work is self-portraiture and Cahun presents as outwardly male in a large portion of the images. Where Cahun presents as a woman in images it is often an exaggerated and drag version of femininity. The biography by Gen Doy deals extensively with Cahun’s theoretical interests in sex and sexuality and also recounts her preference of living with a woman multiple times, however the assumption is always made that Cahun is a lesbian woman. Not once is the idea entertained that Cahun could possibly be transgender (and therefore potentially heterosexual) or genderqueer and Cahun is referred to as ‘she’ and ‘lesbian’ throughout the text without any explanation. Both feminist and gay and lesbian studies have failed as approaches when it comes to artists such as Claude Cahun since they refuse to engage with major political and personal aspects of the artist’s life and work. A queer approach may well have shed more light on this popular photographer from the early twentieth-century.

According to government surveys only 93.9% of the adult population in the UK identified as heterosexual in April 2011 to March 2012 (Woodsford, 2012). Estimating the amount of transpeople in the UK is problematic due to the difficulty defining transgender status within current gender paradigms (do we consider self-identification as with sexuality or is medical intervention the standard for defining a transperson?), but a 2008 European study suggests that there could be as many as 1 in 20 transgender individuals within the male population alone using the most wide definitions – and this number is increasing exponentially (‘Transgender EuroStudy’, no date). Going forward feminist approaches do not offer enough scope to record and analyse these important aspects of an artists work and personal life.

Feminist approaches to art history are still an excellent methodology for looking at artworks in the past and for discussing women’s status in society. However the fact that feminist methodologies rely heavily on a bigender paradigm, as demonstrated by the earlier discussed assumption that women’s studies are about the dominance of men over women (Pollock, 1988, p. 1), means that they are not so well-placed to look at artists today and in the future. In a society that is slowly but steadily rejecting the idea of a clear-cut ‘male’ and ‘female’ status (Hird, 2000, p. 348) we need methodologies that can produce a discourse on this new approach to working practices. Feminism is still relevant to the discipline of history of art while examining the past, but it becomes less relevant as we move into the future when those writing about art will need to talk authoritatively on a wider range of gender, sex and sexuality than feminist methodologies currently routinely discuss.

Bibliography

Bann, S. (1986) ‘How Revolutionary is the New Art History?’, in Rees, A. L. and Borzello, F. (eds) The New Art History. London, England: Camden Press.

Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/barbara-hepworth-sculpture-modern-world (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

Cathy Wilkes (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/cathy-wilkes (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

Claude Cahun – Chronology (no date) Claude Cahun Home Page. Available at: http://www.connectotel.com/cahun/cahunchr.html.

Doy, G. (2007) Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography. London: I.B. Tauris. Available at: http://site.ebrary.com/id/10333422 (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

Fernie, E. (1995) Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology. United Kingdom: Phaidon Press, Incorporated.

Fox-Genovese, E. (1982) ‘Placing Women’s History in History’, New Left Review, (133), pp. 5–29.

Halberstam, J. (1998) Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Halberstam, J. (2011) The Queer Art of Failure. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Hird, M. J. (2000) ‘Gender’s nature: Intersexuality, transsexualism and the “sex”/’gender’ binary’, Feminist Theory, 1(3), pp. 347–364. doi: 10.1177/146470010000100305.

Jõekalda, K. (2013) ‘What has become of the New Art History?’, Journal of Art Historiography, (9).

Lord, C. and Meyer, R. (2013) Art and Queer Culture. London: Phaidon Press.

Marinucci, M. (2010) Feminism Is Queer: The intimate connection between queer and feminist theory. London: Zed.

Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/marlene-dumas-image-burden (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

McCall, L. (2005) ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), pp. 1771–1800. doi: 10.1086/426800.

Nochlin, L. (1978) Art and sexual politics; women’s liberation, women artists, and art history. 4. print. Edited by T. B. Hess. New York: Collier Books (Collier books).

Pollock, G. (1988) Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and Histories of Art (Routledge Classics). United Kingdom: London ; Routledge.

Rees, A. L. and Borzello, F. (eds) (1986a) ‘Introduction’, in The New Art History. London, England: Camden Press.

Rees, A. L. and Borzello, F. (eds) (1986b) The New Art History. London, England: Camden Press.

Susan Hiller (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/susan-hiller (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-sonia-delaunay (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

‘Transgender EuroStudy’ (no date) TGEU. Available at: http://tgeu.org/eurostudy/ (Accessed: 7 May 2015).

Woodsford, S. (2012) Integrated Household Survey April 2011 to March 2012: Experimental Statistics. Available at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/integrated-household-survey/integrated-household-survey/april-2011-to-march-2012/stb-integrated-household-survey-april-2011-to-march-2012.html#tab-Sexual-identity (Accessed: 7 May 2015).

June 23, 2015
Today I cried (OR: Why sometimes I hate the photography industry that I love)

If you know me, you’ll know I love taking photographs.

I mean, I really love taking photographs. I don’t quite make it the centre of my life, but it’s certainly very important to me.

Photography has shaped my life. It has touched almost every choice I’ve made over the past ten years. It’s the reason I’m at university studying history of art. Because I wanted to understand what drives humans to make pictures.

Over the years I’ve become frustrated though. So many photographers just seem to be living back in the 70s with their attitudes and world views.

This notebook seems appropriate. Someone buy it for me.

So this morning I decided to log on and watch the www.engagelive.co “What Women Want” session with Brett Florens. You see, he’s talking at the convention this year that I’m working and I’ve heard that he’s pretty awesome. Certainly I know that he’s popular within the society that I work for and so I figured I’d like to see what he’s all about. The problem was, it was just sexist drivel. Right from the start.

Florens immediately used the bigender paradigm and gender stereotypes. ‘Men are more technical and women are more creative’ was the gist of the first hour. Even suggesting that there are more women in the industry now because they don’t have technical barriers to entry. You know what he picked as his example of a ‘technical barrier’? Loading film. Now, I don’t know about you but I’ve been loading films in cameras since I was about five years old. It’s not fucking rocket science.

The problem is, that Florens has some great ideas. It’s quite clear that he is at the top of his game photographically and he does shoot great work. He also has a serious attitude problem. Every single bit of his advice seems to be framed as ‘women like this’ and ‘men do this’. And it’s frustrating. I had to turn it off after an hour or so.

Framing success in your field as gender-based is problematic.Florens seemed to be largely saying ‘men – you need to be more like women. Women photographers are emotional and in touch with other women. And your clients are mostly the Brides, so you need to learn this shit otherwise you’ll fail.’ Of course the big irony here seems to be that Florens isn’t in touch with what the woman-hivemind thinks at all, otherwise he’d know that this kind of gender stereotyping isn’t helping anyone.

There are some very real problems with gender based social conditioning in the world. For instance, our Western society teaches boys to value themselves highly and girls to value themselves less than boys. We grow up with these ideas and they become a part of our expected adult behaviours. It’s well documented that these behaviours shape our society – for instance in the gender pay gap, and the lack of women in top job roles.

It’s a common refrain; one that pops up again and again in the mailboxes and conversations of those writing about gender imbalance or even just daring to talk about it. “Women are equal now (more or less)”. Why, it is frequently demanded, do we continue to bang on about something that is barely even an issue any more? Why not think about some of the real problems in the world, given that we women in the UK now live ‘gilded lives’ and, to all intents and purposes (apart from a few little ifs and buts) have achieved equality? Those little ifs and buts don’t half have a habit of adding up though…

– Laura Bates, The Everyday Sexism Project

Laura Bates is right. The little ifs and buts really do add up. When an international superstar photographer like Florens gives lectures where he uses problematic gender stereotypes he’s basically giving permission for his followers to think this way. And then even more ifs and buts creep in, and suddenly just fighting the ‘ifs and buts’ battle is like walking up a steep hill in three feet of thick, clay mud.

So why was his language problematic to me? Well firstly there was that initial assertion that there are now more women in the photography industry because the technical barrier to industry has been removed. It seems particularly pertinent to pick up on this point again since today is National Women in Engineering day.

On face value it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that there are more women in the photography industry because of the lack of technical barriers due to digital. It’s almost certainly true. But it’s almost certainly not true in the way that Florens thinks it is. Over the past 100 years or so, photography has traditionally been the preserve of the white, middle-class male. Why? Because scientific and technical hobbies were considered appropriate for this demographic. Women simply didn’t study sciences in the same way that men did during this period which meant that there wasn’t generally the base level of chemistry and physics knowledge in place to really get on with photography as a hobby easily. This did create a technical barrier to entry – but it wasn’t because women are inherently poor at technical subjects, it was because patriarchal culture kept women out of education in general and at home looking after the family. Interestingly in the first decade or two of photography there were many women photographers, it was considered a good hobby for women back then. Not sure what changed.

So really I suspect that it’s not so much that digital has lowered the technical barrier to entry, but rather that society has changed since the early 70s and more women are going into all kinds of different careers – including photography. Suggesting that women are coming into photography because the science-bit isn’t so prominent anymore is so deeply patronising to all those women who have made science their careers. The STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) industries can be hard enough when you’re a woman because of preconceived ideas about what women are capable of (or because those industries have been known to promote toxic working environments). It’s not cool to be an industry leader and promote those outdated and sexist ideas, Florens. Next you’ll be telling us that women photographers are a problem because they fall in love with you and then cry when you critisise them. Oh no, wait, that was last week in the biochemistry sector. It’s not a million miles away though.

But there was also the perpetuation of damaging male stereotypes too in Florens’ introduction this morning. Florens went to great lengths to paint ‘men’ as emotionally stunted individuals who don’t care what women are saying and who aren’t in touch with their clients at all. Even using the comparison that when women greet female friends they say things like ‘you look beautiful’ whereas men call each other ‘fat pigs’ when they see their friends. Now, maybe I’m just exceptionally lucky. But most of my female friends don’t put much weight on their female friends appearances. My friends certainly don’t fuss over each others appearance and bolster some imaginary self-confidence that is tied into looks. But my male friends don’t call each other fat pigs either. He was trying to explain that men are condescending to each other, describing this as ‘banter’. To be honest though, that kind of banter is the domain of teenagers, not adult men. Or occasionally those grim, laddish types – who I couldn’t imagine generally going into careers like photography anyway. (Char’s Pro Tip: If your mates call you a fat pig when you see them you should change your friends because they’re dickheads.)

There’s something very serious to be said here though. The persistent stereotype that men are emotionally stunted individuals who can’t open up about their feelings is a problem. It reinforces the idea that men shouldn’t talk about ‘girlie’ subjects.Florens discussed the idea that male photographers should get in touch with their feminine sides – as if emotionally connecting with people is somehow the domain of women. This isn’t a girlie thing, or a feminine thing, this is something that everyone should feel like they can do. Florens also used phrases like ‘macho men’ when describing those who guys don’t appear to be emotional or in touch with their feminine side (whatever that means), using the phrase as if this was the default state for all men.

Suggesting that being emotional is ‘feminine’ is quite damaging. In our society, we still reward ‘macho’ men and punish those that appear to be ‘feminine’. We call them fags or pussys because they’re too girlie. This is one of the leading reasons why suicide rates due to mental health are so high for men. Because it’s seen as being weak and girlie to open up. Thanks Florens for potentially reinforcing this idea in many photographers heads. I understand that Florens was suggesting you could be better in business if you are emotionally in touch with your clients, but the way it was framed as ‘women = emotional’ and ‘men = not emotional’ is just perpetuating the problem.

The whole way through Florens’ lecture I couldn’t help but feel he was missing a whole world of beautiful people. To him it seemed that only two types of people existed: feminine women and masculine men. What he was ignoring was the beautiful spectrum of everyone in between. I generally consider myself a masculine women for example, and there are men who are most certainly feminine men. And then of course there are those who fall somewhere else on the scale – transgender individuals, third gender individuals, those who don’t consider themselves either masculine or feminine, male or female. I’d urge everyone vaguely interested in being more compassionate where gender is concerned to pick up and read Halberstam’s book on Feminine Masculinity. It’s a great primer to the diversity of humans.

When you’re at the top of your game, like Brett Florens is, I believe you have a certain responsibility towards the way that you educate others. Teaching isn’t easy, it’s a real skill that has to be learned. I’ve sat through quite a few lectures and workshops by lots of different photographers and although many of them are good photographers, they couldn’t teach to save their lives. To be a good photography teacher you have to understand words as much as you understand how to load film in a camera.

Words hurt. Words can be damaging. Using the wrong words can mean that your message gets lost because your words have hurt people. Somebody said in the chatroom during the live broadcast that perhaps there should be some lectures on semantics for photographers – I think that’s a great idea. You could run Gendered Language 101, Abelist langage 101, and racist language 101 – and that’s just for starters. You could also run seminars on why women and men aren’t so different after all, and why we have far more in common than people seem to think. And then perhaps we might start to understand in the photographic industry that it’s not men that are the technical wizards and women who are the emotional souls – we’re just people with different mixes of the two.

I once spoke to a lovely photographer who said to me ‘You need to know enough of the technical stuff to be able to drive your camera competently. Only then you can start being creative.’ They weren’t wrong, you know. You can’t have one skill without the other. That simply doesn’t work any more.

So yeah, I cried today. I cried because there is still so far to go in the photography industry before we see any kind of parity. I wept because people like Florens keep perpetuating stereotypes that make it harder for anyone who isn’t a ‘macho’ man to get taken seriously. I cried tears of frustration because we are told by people like www.engagelive.co that Florens is not sexist, he is just ‘controversial’. Being sexist isn’t controversial. It’s sad. It’s the sign of someone clinging to an outdated world view that should have been left back in the 70s.

The 70s – do you remember them? When sexism was rife, people didn’t wear seat-belts, drink driving was acceptable and Jimmy Saville was still letting kids sit on his knee on the tellebox. Yeah, the 70s. That time when it was still acceptable to say that women can’t do basic technical challenges. Like changing the film in a camera.

June 23, 2015
Proper Academic, Like.

I got mentioned in the final project of the lovely Emma Shea – you can see her bibliography here.

In fact you can hear her draft run through of her paper on her YouTube channel and you can read her notes here – and do read them because they’re really very interesting.

I’m pretty honoured to be honest. I never thought that my random thoughts on photography would ever be included in any academic work, although this isn’t the first time. Earlier this year I found that my work was being studied on a City and Guilds photography course, which was pretty cool too.

I’m reminded of a tutor I had for one of my first modules at university last year. I studied the Arts of Japan and we had a genuinely brilliant tutor. Jasper is one of the authorities on Japanese Pink Cinema, his book Behind the Pink Curtain is on my bookcase where it stakes a claim to being one of the most interesting books I own. In our first lecture with him he cracked a joke about how he was still studying for his PhD which means that although his book is used to teach students at universities, he’s wasn’t actually fully qualified to be a lecturer in his own right.

When I heard about Emma’s use of my post (it’s the one on displays of hyper-masculinities in photography) and about the City and Guilds course, I couldn’t help but feel a bit like Jasper. People are using my work – both written and photographic – to illustrate courses and dissertations that are actually at a level higher than I have personally achieved. I’m still only in my second year, trailing a year behind Emma, and at the time I’d not completed anything past an A-Level in anything creative (I don’t think my personal training qualifications count here).

I sometimes wonder if I’m convincing people that I’m something I’m not. I mean, I get paid to write about photography for a living, and I’ve not even finished my degree in history of art. I get paid to write exhibition reviews and discuss theories about photography and do all that stuff that graduates struggle to be able to do. Some of my colleagues on my degree course actually thought I was just writing for free when I said I was a writer – they didn’t know that I actually got paid (and get paid well!) for my work.

Every time I get a magazine through the door that I contributed to I’m excited. I open it up and I see my name as the author for articles and I squeal with joy. I really hope that this feeling never goes away. The excitement of seeing my name in print, month on month. And I hope that people still continue to enjoy reading my work.

But most of all, I hope that my work continues to provide an inspiration for students who are formulating their own arguments and opinions. Because I really admire the people who’s work I read and use in my essays. And it would be an honour for others to feel that way about me in the future.

Warning: I had flu when I wrote this. Might be overly sappy and incoherent.

March 2, 2015
Qualifications in LARP photography

A somewhat misleading title. You can’t get qualifications in LARP photography and I’m not about to start my own school proclaiming that you can. (Unless you want to send me a few hundred quid and I’ll print you a certificate out on this fancy paper I have tucked away.)

However you can get some qualifications in photography.

Allow me to insert a brief interlude here. This blog is not interested in the debating the differences between qualifications and awards, or the value/worth of letters awarded by societies based on submitted panels of work. Comments to that effect may well get deleted if they’re not very constructive.

Since I write for an organisation that awards qualifications based on panels of work I’ve been toying for a while if perhaps I should work my way through the process of putting together a panel and submitting to see what happens. It’s not the cheapest side project I could do, but it seems worthwhile.

However the subject then comes up of what exactly I should submit. I’d always thought that I’d like to submit a portfolio of nudes featuring men, but I’ve never quite managed to get that project off the ground and if the truth is told, I’m just not as interested in that as I used to be.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about if LARP is art. Tied into that are considerations about if photography of LARP can be art. Which I think is also kind of interesting. But then I find all sorts of strange things quite interesting. It struck me that perhaps I should work towards my photographic qualifications by submitting panels of LARP photography (or my ‘funny friends’ as my editor likes to put it).

I am certainly of the opinion that photographs of LARP can be good enough to submit to an organisation as part of a panel of this kind. The entry guidelines are as follows:

We are looking for images that show the applicant is in full control of the medium. The images should show correct camera technique, full control of the lighting and the final production of the finished image. Many images fail at the last hurdle because the final digital file or print quality is poor, showing banding from ink jet prints, blemishes that should have been retouched or poor presentation. Very often colour balance is wrong. We expect to see that the photographer is in control of the subjects portrayed and in the case of people, that they are posed in an attractive manner and good expressions obtained.

A submission of twenty prints is required at 20×16” of a uniform size and flush mounted.

In the case of all other submission your application should be in a singular discipline i.e. landscapes, pictorial, illustrative, commercial etc.

It doesn’t seem too difficult. A panel of twenty images that show correct camera technique, control of lighting and good final production to print.

I can manage that, right?

January 13, 2015
Five things you shouldn’t say to a photographer

So a friend posted a link this morning to an article of things you shouldn’t say to a photographer. Predictably it was full of things like ‘you must have a really expensive camera!’ and ‘ I wish I had your job, all you have to do is press a button!’

I get that these rile photographers up. After all, (some) photographers do work hard and have a talent for taking great pictures, and it doesn’t happen just because you bought a great camera. And there is an awful lot more work that goes into it than just pressing a button.

But readers, I present to you my own – slightly cynical – list of thing not to say to a photographer.

Are you the model?

Heard being said to photographers who are women at workshops since… well.. since forever. No, I’m not the model. Do I look like a model? I’m five foot tall, have bad skin and don’t take care of my hair. I’m also wearing all my old walking gear because I’m going to be rolling around on the floor sometimes when I photograph the model. Oh and this bag here? It’s a fucking camera bag. Being a photographer is about noticing details – please try to notice some mode. Thanks.

I know you’re not a model, but would you pose nude for me? It’ll be tasteful.

Anyone asking that question of a photographer who is a woman and that they don’t know very well is unlikely to shoot anything tasteful. Ask yourself this simple question ‘would I ask this question to 72 year old Master Photographer Bob who is standing ten feet away? If you wouldn’t, then don’t ask that photographer either. If you still ask this question of a photographer just because she’s a woman and you like photographing women – you’re a sleaze-ball. And a creep. Just don’t. Thanks.

You do sports and product photography? Oh. I thought you’d be more likely to photograph babies and weddings.

Presenting as a woman in public doesn’t mean that I have any desire to come into contact with small humans or celebrations of monogamy. Thanks.

Don’t you find it hard carrying around all that equipment you need for sports photography?

No. I don’t. I’m under thirty (just) and I’m pretty fit. I also used to enjoy powerlifting. I might even be able to deadlift more than you. But while you’re worrying about the health and safety aspects of my job, perhaps you could direct that angst towards the gear manufactures who seem to think that their entire target market is 6ft and has stereotypical male proportions? Thanks.

Female photographers have it easier.

Well firstly I’d like you to stop adding the prefix ‘female’ to photographer. You don’t add ‘male’ to the word photographer when you’re talking about someone who appears to be male. I’m a human, so if you must use any word to describe me it’s ‘woman’.

Secondly, you might think we do, but we really don’t. I mean aside from the pervasive casual sexism that is rife within the hobby and industry (you know, things like, having to constantly prove that we know what we’re doing and that we’re not just some soccer mom with a camera), and then aside from the fact that society expects us to hang out at home, get married, have babies and then have a hobby job, being a photographer is really bloody hard whichever gender you identify as. Yeah ok, so some women might find it easier to attract work when it comes to things like maternity shoots, newborn babies, lesbian weddings and the like, but you know what it’s harder for us to work in any of the traditionally male dominated areas. Photographers who are women often aren’t taken seriously if they pitch for corporate work, product work, work within the science industries – the list goes on. So don’t whinge and there are a few minority areas where some women find it just a little easier than men to get work. Because honestly, every other part is just as hard or harder for us.

Please do take this in the spirit it was intended. And possibly with a little extra hate and bile.

January 10, 2015
The Patriarchy and the War Wounded

Private Jaco Van Gass, injured in Afghanistan, aged 23 – Photography by Bryan Adams

They’re genuinely beautiful portraits (and, I really love that natural light) but as well as the inevitable sadness in me from what they’ve had to suffer through, I can’t help but feel a frustration that these pictures are all of men.

Not a frustration directed towards Brian Adams (he clearly would have had a limited number of war wounded to photograph) or towards the subjects of the portraits (they have no choice in who they are fighting alongside), but a frustration that we – as a society – still don’t consider it appropriate for women to be taking these kinds of front line jobs in our military.

That says two things to me:

1. We don’t think that women are good enough to be on the front line.

But more importantly:

2. We don’t think that men are capable of having women on the front line and in positions of danger.

Patriarchy is the state that reinforces that men are mindless and uncontrollable neanderthals who are unable to think for themselves or have intelligent options. Fuck the patriarchy.

Marine Joe Townsend, injured in Afghanistan, aged 19 – Photography by Bryan Adams

November 17, 2014
Displays of hyper-masculinity in amateur photography

Something I’m really interested in is the way that men are depicted in the media, especially when it comes to photography. A while ago I spent some time exploring what it was like to shoot glamour images of men and that involved spending time looking at lots of pictures of men (oh gosh… what a hardship…).

Immersing myself in the world of amateur model photographers was a fascinating experience, especially since I came at it from the angle of photographing men rather than women. As you can imagine this particular subset of the hobby is rather dominated by photographers photographing attractive young women and initially placing photographs of men in front of this demographic appeared to cause active discomfort.

However as time went on I noticed a trend in that more of these male photographers were adding male models to their portfolios (I shan’t speculate on the reasons why this might have been the case, that is for another blog post) but that the tropes that they were photographing were in many cases as damaging as the way that women were being depicted.

Weapons. Lots of them. It seemed that if you normally photographed sexy women and you’d decided to photograph a man instead, then they had to come with a sword or a gun or some other display of violence. This hyper-masculine portrayal of the male models seemed to equate ‘sexy’ with ‘violent’ in a way that has far ranging and extraordinarily worrying implications.

I too spent some time with the ever-wonderful Seb Morgan putting together a video based loosely on martial arts and dodgy b-movies and we got this: http://youtu.be/9BMf2aZWigI as well as some stills photography. I tried to focus on the mediative aspects of the weapon rather than the aggression that other photographers portrayed.

If I succeeded or not is down to my viewers, but it has to be worth trying to break the stereotypes down that link men’s sexuality to overt aggression and even violence.

October 31, 2014