Lynn's Photography Journey: Gender, Gaze, Otherness and Photography

In Stuart Hall's text The spectacle of the Other, the author analyses otherness, difference and stereotypes, especially in relation to race.

But before undertaking further analysis of Hall's theory, I just quickly want to explain what we understand under 'Otherness'.

In general, otherness is often referred to as 'the quality of being different or unusual'. (Merriam-Webster). So basically, a synonym for otherness could be difference.

The idea of difference leads us back to Hall, who argues in his text that people that are different from the majority often get exposed to, what he calls, 'a binary form of representation', meaning that they get exposed to extremes, such as good/bad, black/white, male/female...

Additionally, Hall also says that difference has a binary character, meaning that it can be good and bad at the same time. Good, because it is necessary to build meaning, become aware of oneself, develop an identity... But it can also be dangerous, because it can produce hostility towards 'the Other', as for instance racism.

Hall refers to Mikhail Bakhtin wo said that 'we need difference because we can only construct meaning through a dialogue with 'the Other''.

Furthermore, Hall also talks about stereotypes in relation to race saying that 'there is the polarized opposition between racial 'purity' on the one hand, and the 'pollution' which comes from intermarriage, racial hybridity and interbreeding.' So basically, what he says, is that there are certain things that we associate white people with and other things that we associate black people with. It is remarkable though that he uses the word ‘pollution’ to refer to people with a black skin color, showing that in these times black people were often associated with negative connotations, which made them different and ‘other’ compared to white people.

Another thing that we looked at today is the gaze, meaning the way how people look at a picture.

In this context, it could be interesting to refer to feminism and Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, referring to the way how films and adverts featuring women are often structured around a male audience.

But the gaze doesn't necessarily have to be male, it is much more complex than that, therefore it might help to refer to Jonathan Schroeder who argued that 'to gaze implies more than to look at - it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze'.

'Gazing at' someone implies 'bothering' that someone. When we look at someone in a picture we judge them, according to our own experience, and by doing so, we reveal a lot about ourselves, our interest and taste. This might sound really confusing, but in his Distinction, Bourdieu simplified this phenomenon in few words by saying that 'Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier'.

Lee Miller:

Born in 1907, Lee Miller worked as a fashion model, before she began her career as photographer. In 1929 she travelled to Paris to become surrealist artist Man Ray’s assistant and muse, until 1932. After that she opened her own studio in New York, until she married an Egyptian man and moved to Cairo, Egypt with him for a couple of years.

It is particularly interesting that, during World War II she worked as only female combat photographer in Europe and thus her most important pieces of work include a lot of war photographs.

The fire masks that the women are wearing, show how Lee Miller constantly tried to include surrealist elements into her pictures.

Although this picture might not seem extraordinary at first, one has to notice that the woman in the bathtub is Lee Miller and the bathtub is in Munich and used to be Hitler's bathtub, so once you have these background information about the set, your gaze totally changes, and you start othering Miller.

Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus, born in 1923 is probably one of the most important female photographers of the 20^th century. She was often described as ‘a photographer of freaks’, due to the fact that she mainly concentrated on "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality

seems ugly or surreal."

She thought that her camera could reveal the truth about people and shamelessly show their flaws, therefore her pictures were often ’shocking in their purity’.

Again all three pictures have a very strong gaze, you look at them and immediately start judging the people. 'That man looks so strange!' 'Why does he have fake nails and nail polish?', 'Oh, he's smoking'.

Same with the little boy, 'Why does he have grenades in his hands?', 'Who are his parents? I would never let my kids play with a toy that looks like a grenade'.

But what we maybe not notice at first is that each of these people looking into the camera also has a gaze. Think about what they may think about us, the viewers.

Nancy 'Nan' Golden

Nancy ‘Nan’ Goldin is an American photographer, born in 1953, whose work focuses on topics such as gender domesticity, love and sexuality

She is particularly famous for ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’ a 45 minute long slideshow featuring pictures that show drag queens, drug abuse, sex, domestic violence, etc…

Nan Goldin didn’t at all hold back in her work, therefore her pictures are very revealing, intimate and personal, for instance her picture ‘Nan one month after being battered’ shows Nan’s face covered in bruises because of her violent boyfriend.

Moreover, she had a special interest in drag queens and said that her desire ‘was to show them as a third gender, as another sexual option, a gender option.‘

This last one isn't part of Goldin's slide show, so it doesn't really fit with the other two, but I think that it is nevertheless a good example to again refer to the gaze and at the same time show how Nan Goldin crossed all boundaries and even photographed herself after being battered by her boyfriend.

Sarah Maple

Born in 1985, Sarah Maple is probably one of the youngest photographers that focus on the representation of otherness.

She is largely influenced by her multicultural background (Iranian-muslim mother; british-christian father) and her commitment to feminism. This is also noticeable in her work, in which she mainly focuses on topics such as culture, religion, sexuality and feminity.

By touching on these, often controversial themes, she uses her work to fight against social pressure and stereotypes.