Dorota Sadovská's 'Corporealities'

The main theme in Dorota Sadovská work is the human body, viewed realistically, albeit from an unusual point of view, so it often loses its realism in an absurd optical shortcut, thus changing its actuation and wiping away the objectivity of the picture. For these reasons, and many more, Sadovská became a huge inspiration for me in conjunction with my Major Project, especially her body of work Corporealities where she bares her breast in an unromantic, unsexualised manner. Denuding them of sexual potency, she treats her breasts as sheer sculptural matter, also reminding us of the medical necessity of self-examination. By pinching, squeezing, pushing and pulling her rather voluptuous bosom she turns these feminine objects of male desire into something rather more comical, removing the romantic notion of them and instead portraying them as what they are, mounds of fat and flesh

I have always been a fan of Sadovskás' work dealing with the human body and after seeing this piece in The Body in Contemporary Art she fast became one of my favourite female artists dealing with the female form. Like Jenny Savilles' work (blogged about on the 25th March) it is the beauty of the flesh, filling the whole of the frame that really draws me to her work. So here is another set of deliciously fleshy photographs for you all to sink your teeth in. An aesthetic I strived to achieve with my final body of work entitled Bare.

Final Shoots...

So with my project deadline looming ever closer, I spent my Easter holidays cracking on with my final project, if you remember my post from the 6th March you will know what it is all about. But for those who don't, here's the general gist of it, I am doing self portraits that focus on my body and the theories around the male gaze. They are also representing this transitional period of my life, leaving education and entering the world and are therefore very bold and hopefully like Jenny Saville's work (see blog entry 25th March) deliciously fleshy! I decided to stick to more subtle images than some from my first shoot, focusing on feminine curves and suggestions. So enjoy and please let me know your thoughts about any prints you think I should use for finals!

"If there's a narrative, I want it in the flesh."

For my new project I have been researching female artists who use the female form in their work. After purchasing Phaidon's brilliant new book The Artist's Body, I became fascinated with the work of Jenny Saville, especially her collaboration with photographer Glen Luchford of which some images are shown below. This work really caught my eye as it captures the female nude in the way I am looking into, unromanticized and raw unlike how I believe a lot of male photographers always document it. Saville's body is not perfect in the way the media represents women and the photographs are deliciously fleshy.

Saville lays on top of a large sheet of perspex as Glen Luchford, a fashion photographer, photographs from below. The resulting images present a female nude distorted by pressing heavily on the perspex but is also beautiful due to the use of light and the opulent slickness of photography. Both seductive and disturbing, Saville's form is being pushed out of the 'canvas' towards the viewer rather than remaining safely at a distance, a theme I am working with within my self portraits for my final project, showing raw, unperfect flesh right up in the viewer's face. The huge scale of Saville's photographs, together with the cropping of her body, which almost completely fills the frame, contribute to the overwhelming sense of flesh and are a huge inspiration for my, more subtle, but fleshy self portraits.

Start of Major Project

After many months of not taking photos and writing my 8000 word essay it's been tough trying to turn my mind back to working on a project. Looking back at my last Major Project Planning I have been finding it difficult to develop my self portraits, dealing with the issues of being insignificant and dealing with this faze of my life, moving on from the safety of education and into the big bad working world.

After researching into the artist Jemima Stehli, dealing with issues of the gaze and using her body in many of her portraits she has become a huge influence to me. With this in mind I wanted to deal with some of the issues I have with my body. After putting on a lot of weight over the winter term I started a health kick in January and have lost a few pounds and with this I have gained a new self confidence in my body. Whilst I don't have a perfect body, and never in my mind will, I want to try and celebrate my body and get over these fears. Therefore I picked up the camera and started to do some nude shots, I wanted to focus on womanly curves and aspects of the figure regularly used to document the sensuality of the female form but making the images fairly abstract, so only hints of it are captured.

Below are my first experiments with this idea. I am very nervous and even embarrassed to bare all to you but thanks to such female artists as Jemima Stehli and Mari Sarai I want to celebrate these nerves and embrace them. I don't know where these images will lead to but for now am fairly pleased with them, celebrating wobbly bits in all their glory! Let me know what you think.

Jemima Stehli

For my dissertation entitled 'Who has control, Artist or Model?' one of the main artists I am discussing is Jemima Stehli as I find her work fascinating as it deliberates around theories of the gaze and the objectification of the female body. Often using herself as the subject, she questions the notion that the female nude can only be viewed passively. As I research more into her work she has become a bigger and bigger influence to me and I love her confidence of putting herself and her body out there. Something I wish I could do more and want to do more. I recently purchased these two books to use as research for my essay and have been totally absorbed in them, especially Contemporary British Women Artists in their own words which interviews 20 of what I believe are some of the most important women in art today, it is extremely interesting to read as a female artist myself.

The main work by Stehli that I am looking at is her Strip series, where she slowly reveals her naked body to a series of male curators, art dealers, writers and critics, asking them to release her camera's shutter through a cable from time to time. The set is her studio, a place that is often considered a site of narcissistic production, and her body is one that fits the idealized version of a female body promoted by the media. By using the power of a body stripped bare to agitate and fluster, Stehli denies her subject control of their own image, while still relinquishing her own control by asking him to decide on the moment of representation. I absolutely love the complexities of this series as we see the personalities of the men as they either deliberately look away from her naked presence or stare straight at her with masculine bravado. It is a fascinating series to research and here are some of the images for you to decide upon but I strongly recommend her book pictured above as it has a lot more of her wonderful work all dealing with the idea of the voyeuristic gaze.

Nude

Mari Sarai - 'Naked'

Walking past a little gallery called 'Doors Showcase' in Shoreditch an exhibition poster caught my eye, it was photographer Mari Sarai's series Naked. I had never heard of her before but was automatically drawn in to an exhibition that celebrates the naked form in a series of beautiful photographs featuring the liberation of powerful woman and all their glory. There are many ways the naked body can be interpreted and as a photographer who is interested in exploring ways of depicting the nude form in my current project, it was really refreshing to see such a bold presentation of the female body, it captures how a woman's eye sees a woman's body, without any of theh sexual undertones that male photographers seem to always induce, but still celebrating the sexual aspects of the female form.

Sarai's images are very intimate and playful. She celebrates the expressiveness of the female body and shows that nudity is not negative, dark or seedy and for this I congratulate her. I am definitely now encouraged to pursue the naked form in my new project and hope I can celebrate and capture them as well as she does.

The exhibition is on until 13th October, so if you get a chance, go see it!

The Body

A project I really enjoyed doing as it was my first nude shoot. I am really pleased with the lighting in these images, it's very subtle and hits the body beautifully. I really love the images and am pleased with how comfortable I have now become using a studio, which is something I love doing and of course, a very useful skill to have!