Flesh as Commodity, 2017
3 silk Habotai prints stitched into bras
The woman, specifically when posed nude, has always been subjected to the scopophilic nature of the male. “Men do not simply look, their gaze carries with it the power of action and of possession...”(Kaplan 1983, 311). And this power and possession poses the women as that of a commodity and not a living, breathing, feeling, entity. “Woman is traditionally use-value for man, exchange-value among men, Merchandise, then.”(Irigaray, 1985, 105). This androcentric and ultimately, phallocentric depiction of female as commodity removes and diminishes the accessibility to power and claim for a woman over her own flesh.
So how do you photograph a nude women and present her in a way that disrupts and disorients the commodity of flesh she automatically exhibits under the eye of the man?
3 silk Habotai prints stitched into bras
The woman, specifically when posed nude, has always been subjected to the scopophilic nature of the male. “Men do not simply look, their gaze carries with it the power of action and of possession...”(Kaplan 1983, 311). And this power and possession poses the women as that of a commodity and not a living, breathing, feeling, entity. “Woman is traditionally use-value for man, exchange-value among men, Merchandise, then.”(Irigaray, 1985, 105). This androcentric and ultimately, phallocentric depiction of female as commodity removes and diminishes the accessibility to power and claim for a woman over her own flesh.
So how do you photograph a nude women and present her in a way that disrupts and disorients the commodity of flesh she automatically exhibits under the eye of the man?
