[Leica] photography, gender roles, power structures, my daughter, and the beauty standard

[jayanand at gmail.com (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

Kyle,
Very well said. Is this not also fueled by parents wanting to get their
eight year olds into magazines or TV? I see so many shots of kids in
mainstream magazines with the eyes of adults....

Cheers
Jayanand

On 11/5/07, Kyle Cassidy <kcassidy@asc.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> In light of recent events -- I feel compelled to speak out.
>
> Photography has been a huge, possibly the largest, part of the definition
> of the American beauty standard almost since its creation. The Goudy ladies
> turned from pencil sketches to photographs as rapidly as the technology
> allowed. And the first stop that a young woman makes on her way to
> representing that American beauty standard is with a portfolio. Which means
> she visits a photographer, usually on the photographer's dime if she has 
> any
> chance, or on her own if she doesn't. Of the millions of women in this
> country we might think of as "beautiful" -- only the smallest handful will
> ever actually be models (I really recommend Jurgen Teller's sad and
> beautiful photo book "go sees" in which he documents all the women who show
> up at his studio door for a year, hoping to be models). This leaves a trail
> of extremely attractive young women, desperate to BE what they see on
> magazine pages every day. As photographers we are lucky -- a little talent,
> dedication, and a lot of practice and most any photographer, no matter how
> over weight, out of shape, etc. can produce fashion images that grace
> magazine pages, billboards, and newspapers. You can study your way to being
> a skilled photographer, but you can't study your way to being beautiful.
> Here are careers made and hearts broken.
>
> Somewhere beneath that over-layer of fashion and beauty photography there
> exists a sub strata that disturbs me to my core -- a species of 
> photographer
> known in the industry as GWAC's (Guys With A Camera) -- they have a camera,
> they have two strobes, a pair of umbrellas, and a white seamless and 
> they've
> made a personal hobby out of preying on the aspirations and hopes of young
> women who desperately _want_. On the one hand, you can view this as 
> harmless
> hobbyism -- women who want to be models, men who want to be photographers,
> existing in a symbiotic relationship producing photographs -- and that
> actually often happens -- the Internet is filled with talented part-time
> models and skilled part-time photographers who produce mutually benefitial
> product every day and fuel sites like modelmayhem.com -- indeed, this is
> where the alt.fashion industry arose. But at the same time, there are
> photographers who use the modicum of skill they have to lure women into
> situations that are _not_ mutually beneficial, they produce hard drives
> filled with bikini photos, and topless shots of women in fedoras caressing
> Mamiya 645's, that will never see, nor were they ever meant to, see the
> light of publication -- they're "personal use" photos whose sole function 
> is
> to get the photographer in a room with naked women. In my mind it's the 
> most
> obscene kind of voyurism, based on lies, in which one party is coaxed into
> actively participating  in a role she's been mislead into thinking is in 
> her
> benefit. It's like a dude ranch for women, made out of film and dreams.
> "Come to this shoot, get undressed, show your friends your photos -- 
> they'll
> be jealous you're a bikini model and they're not." But nobody's warned them
> to beware of a "fashion" photographer who wants you to bring your own
> wardrobe. As I've been telling models for years -- once you're naked on the
> Internet, you're naked on the Internet _forever_. It's a decision worthy of
> a lot more contemplation than "Ooh! I get a CD of all the shots?!"
>
> We see advertised now across the country fantasy "retreats" for
> photographers where models and lighting are provided and groups of the 
> newly
> cameraed cluster around one another, jockying for position, snapping away 
> at
> a topless vixen. Then they retire to the bar to discuss lens caps or set up
> "private" sessions with the models. This is no more "photography" than
> shooting an Ibus tethered to a stake is "hunting". It does not serve the
> greater cause of photography but instead emboldens an evil side that is
> unmotivated by talent, skill, and creativity and thrives on the emotional
> plunder of some by others, placing men in falsified positions of power.
>
> I don't know what the solution is -- you can't teach good taste in a
> weekend Nikon workshop, but perhaps calling this particular monster genre
> out of the closet and pointing a finger at it is a start.
>
>
> Hopefully my daughter (if i had one) would have posessed a critical eye
> for portfolio review and never gotten involved, but there are millions of
> daughters who don't posess that, who've never been exposed to photography 
> on
> a critical level and can't make those judgements. Support arts education in
> your schools and communities.
>
> kc
>
>
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