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Collodion has been my main form of photographic investigation for the
last three years, and because of its rich history, it has come to complicate
the meaning of my photographs.
Using this medium to photograph
the landscape I am attempting to rehumanize what has historically been
a larger-than-life subject. The traditional western landscape regards
horizon, ridge-line and distance: a grand vista on which one can impose
one's own presence and fantasies. The damage to people and land caused
by the ideas that are represented by these images merits photographic
investigation. My photographs offer much bleaker and more intimate views
of the earth and the land. Using an antiquated process does give the landscapes
a veneer of nostalgia, but not a nostalgia for romantic, pastoral landscapes
or the uncharted, wild west. Rather, the medium is less about nostalgia
and more about giving a painterly beauty treatment, more about my hand
being present in the image and calling attention to the process and the
maker. In this cultural moment digital photography is becoming more popular
and photochemical processes are nearly on life support. The act of making
the most analog form of photograph possible is an act of remembrance,
of remaining in conversation with photographers across time.
My previous
project, entitled Autoerotica, looks back at the history of lens
voyeurism. In this series I photograph myself in the style of vintage
erotica, in part to attempt to resolve my conflicting feelings about erotica
and pornography. Although the poses and the conventions are often borrowed
from the traditional "male gaze" on a woman, my intent is to
make clear that these are self-portraits and that as a form of empowerment
I am choosing to portray myself as an object of sexual desire. This allows
me to explore the conflict between my own desire to be seen and my shyness
and insecurity.
If we accept the argument that pornography objectifies the socially unequal
woman for a man’s gratification, the fact that I chose to photograph
myself for my own personal pleasure and gratification nullifies the argument
that the objectified woman is being exploited or degraded. Even though
they are the same poses and vantage points, by reenacting the scene with
myself as the voyeur and the viewed, I am claiming the privileged position.
The inclination to see women as victims and as the object of the male
gaze ignores the small gains that were achieved by manipulating this inequality
and the kinds of agency that is possible in a situation of social inequality.
Since this is an autoerotic endeavor, it must remain within the realm
of pleasure for me. Looking at and imitating pre-1960's pornography gives
me pleasure. Setting myself in another time period functions to help suspend
my disbelief. I am creating other characters, set in another time and
place, to participate in my autoerotic fantasies. What makes erotica so
popular (most likely the subject, it’s ability to stimulate fantasy
and the practically universal hard-wired appeal of sex) is not necessarily
what makes this particular style of erotica so interesting to me, although
I must admit to being titillated by the subject in general. I think it’s
overly academic, hard-hearted, and inhuman to see photography as solely
a cultural production and not an aesthetic one. I am equally interested
in the treatment and stylistic conventions that also carry over into nineteenth
century portraiture and other forms of photography. These include such
sentimental devices as the high- and low-key vignettes, soft focus, the
warm tone, all of which may seem heavy handed and schmaltzy to a Modern
and even Post-Modernist sensibility. This over-romantic illusion is useful
to my purposes, because my intent is to put myself on a pedestal, idealize
myself, romanticize myself. These pictorial devices lend themselves perfectly
to this end.
The impetus of this project was personal - to create sexually charged
images of myself for my own personal pleasure, not necessarily for some
higher lofty goal to break down the walls of repression or to create a
new ideal body type. (Although those would not necessarily be bad side
effects for the work to have.) But it seems disingenuous to say that they
are just for me and then put them up on a wall and show them in public.
So why am i doing this project? What I hope to do is critique, revel in,
and get off on the material that I am working with, including the historical
subject matter and the medium itself - the camera, the cable release,
the paper, the chemistry, and so on. My goal is to find a balance between
creating an aesthetic, pleasurable, and humanistic image while simultaneously
scrutinizing and critiquing the message and the medium.
-Rachel Heath,
June 2007
September
8, 2006 Rachel Weeks was changed to Rachel Heath |
