Anna Gaskell

http://www.utata.org/sundaysalon/anna-gaskell/

Obviously, these images are staged. Gaskell is recreating a scene she sees in her mind. They aren’t reality; they’re a representation of reality. Because the scenes in the photographs lack context…because the viewer isn’t privy to the beginning or the ending of the scene…they convey an enigmatic urgency. They spark a powerful need for more information while denying the viewer all access to more information.

Another photo-shoot involving myself

Here I tried to go for a different kind of photo shoot, firstly I have used myself throughout all the shots, working with a more personal up-close and abstract feel. Focusing more on the objects or pieces of clothes rather then the person themselves. Wanting to create a narrative: An unspoken story.

Charlotte Colbert: Do writers and housewives share a common madness that comes from their isolation?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/charlotte-colbert-do-writers-and-housewives-share-a-common-madness-that-comes-from-their-isolation-8963131.html

"Screenwriting is a very strange occupation. It mostly involves being on your own in a room with a bunch of fictional characters: your body tied down to its chair while you converse and live in a would-be world with imaginary people. It is very solitary and some of my screenwriting friends describe their office as their cell. Locked in with your computer and fantasies. A kind of awake dreaming. A sort of semi-acceptable madness or schizophrenia. As Marguerite Duras said: "Solitude is always accompanied by madness." It is filled with rituals, compulsiveness, superstitions and habits." 

Man Ray – Le Violon D’Angres.

Inspired by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's La Grande Baigneuse, Ray used Kiki de Montparnasse wearing a turban as a model for this piece. He transformed the female body into a musical instrument by painting sound-holes on her back, playing with the idea of objectification of an animate body. Throughout his career Man Ray was fascinated with juxtaposing an object with a female body.

Japy Factory III - Marianne Maric - Lamp Girl

Lamp Girls by Marianne Maric

http://www.dezeen.com/2008/07/17/lamp-girls-by-marianne-maric/

These “lamp-girls” were first conceived as an illustration of the woman as a thing conveyed by the “entertainment world,” but gradually ascending to a state of consciousness. These photographs were part of a broader vision: once the costume was finished, the “living” model put it on and took place on a white rotating base into a dark room. The public had the choice to turn on or off the lamp, the dress, the girl, the room. I wanted to “immortalize” this moment when a woman become a simple household appliance. That is how these photographs were born.

EVOLUTION OF THE FEMALE IMAGE THROUGH THE CENTURIES

A Day in the Life of a 1950's Housewife

A fictitious take on becoming a 50's housewife.
 http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Day-in-the-Life-of-a-50s-Housewife

I confess,that in my darker days of struggle, I've thought about being a 50's housewife . Were they really Stepford-like, robotic creatures under the economic, social and political thumb? What would a day in the life of a 1950's housewife really be like..? Cue music and fade-out for dream sequence....
(Of course, as in any age, just what sorts of freedoms and privileges you enjoy has a lot to do with economic status but since I want to enjoy myself, I'll opt for a comfortable, middle-class fantasy).
Jane Bovary

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2286549/Perfect-50s-housewife-myth-busted-They-didnt-time-immaculate-home-AND-achieve-flawless-look.html

The perfect 50s housewife myth busted: How women didn't have time to keep an immaculate home AND achieve flawless look:

This is a really interesting read; We all have these predeceived views of how woman where like in the 50's, a perfect representation of an ideal woman. Perfect looking house and woman, with the dinner on the table and a cup of tea at the ready. However it seems that realistically these woman would not have enough time for this perfect idea. Most would have jobs, and the household chores where more laborious then we could imagine. How could they keep this perfect facade of utopia whilst still gleaming with a beautiful made up face, clothes and house? The truth it seems that, they couldn't.    

My photoshoot with Elspeth. My coloured favorites.

My most recent photoshoot is now on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artstu/

Photoshoot with Elspeth. My black and white favorites.

My most recent photoshoot is now on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artstu/

Laurie Simmons, Early Color Interiors

Laurie Simmons’ early photography series shot during the late 1970s depicts elaborate dollhouse scenes of suburban malaise with a female doll at the center of the fantasy/factual narrative.

“I’d set up empty interior spaces— miniature rooms and furnishings and lit them with direct sunlight or harsh contrasty theatre lights. I truly felt that they could be mistaken for real places and in this sense became enamored of the camera’s ability to tell lies rather than portray the truth.”

Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke’s 1974 “performalist self-portraits” found the artist transforming her body into a grotesque, satirical statement on feminine beauty. Wilke posed à la pinup style — often topless — with tiny folds of bubble gum covering her body like blemishes, made to look like miniature vulvas for her S.O.S. — Starification Object Series. (The forms were reminiscent of her famed 1960′s vulva sculpture works.) Ironically enough, Wilke often found herself defending the photographs, as many suggested it was her beauty that made them most compelling.

“I chose gum because it’s the perfect metaphor for the American woman — chew her up, get what you want out of her, throw her out, and pop in a new piece.”

Yoko Ono, Cut Piece

In 1964, Yoko Ono invited audience members on stage for a conceptual performance piece called Cut Piece. While kneeling quietly on the floor in a traditional, passive Japanese pose, viewers were offered the chance to cut her clothing away piece by piece until she was naked. Audience members reacted differently (depending upon what country the work was performed in) as Ono transformed herself into a vulnerable object — a role she felt had long been forced upon women in art and media.

“We are now at a stage where we are eager to compete with men on all levels. But women will inevitably arrive at the next stage, and realize the futility of trying to be like men. Women will realize themselves as they are, and not as beings comparative to or in response to men. As a result, the feminist revolution will take a more positive step in the society by offering a feminine direction.”

Semiotics of the Kitchen

Martha Rosler demonstrates the function of multiple kitchen implements (sometimes in rather violent ways) like an anti-Julia Child in her darkly humorous 1975 video, Semiotics of the Kitchen.

” … First of all, it took on television and that’s why it’s preferentially shown in a monitor, a little box. And it is about a kind of framing of women as the creature in the kitchen. And so the box serves that function of the frame, or the cage, again. And it is. I purposely went for only hand tools, because I wanted it very much to be the idea of the tool as the extension of the person. So it was the woman’s hand, and then it becomes the woman’s body in a number of gestures.”
10 Famous Feminist ArtworksBy Alison Nastasi on Mar 27, 2012 7:00pm

FSHN Magazine

San Francisco, Oct 29th 2013: Fashionable, Sexy, Haute and Naughty Magazine (FSHN) today announced the presence of the first ever complete high fashion editorial, shot in IRAN exclusively for the Magazine by Berkeley, Ca based photographer Afra Pourdad. 

FSHN publisher Elisabeth Thieriot said "At FSHN Magazine our mission is to create a publication that transcends global boundaries and the leading publication showcasing emerging designers from all around the world. This editorial featuring the work of 'Zarir Design' and shot by the incredibly talented and courageous Afra Pourdad gives the world a peek behind the iron curtain and lets you see the contradictions and culture of everyday Iran. We are proud to be the magazine which could showcase this amazing editorial."

The editorial shot in the Tajrish Bazaar, Tehran and at the famous Manouchehri House, Kashan was put together by a team of about 10 people including model, designer, makeup and hair artists, assistants, lookouts and the photographer. It aims to showcase the contradictions that exist within Iran today, with the new generation of 20 somethings pushing the boundaries that have defined for them over centuries. Staying with respectable limits of their religion, indigenous fashion in Iran is coming of age.

Realistically Colorized Historical photos

Realistically Colorized Historical photos

Over the last couple years, an increasingly popular trend online has been to create and share colorized photos from history. Artists such as Jordan Lloyd, Dana Keller and Sanna Dullaway take intriguing old black-and-white photos and bring them to life with color as if they’d been taken only yesterday.

Jordan Lloyd

Dana Keller 

 Sanna Dullaway 

MP Demands Ban on Sun's Page Three

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtVFLH4jPLU#t=23

Suzy Lake

“Although she has not overtly addressed feminist issues, the politics of feminism is an undercurrent in all her major photographic works to date. The attention to power relations that feminism implies may be seen in Lake’s work as symbolic of a personal struggle, and her artwork is evident

of her progress”.

Lake’s work continues to use references to the body as a means to investigate notions of beauty in the context of youth and consumer culture.

https://vimeo.com/30434842

Suzy Lake: Self Image Performance.

‘Identity Crisis’ Alexis Hunter

http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/alexis_hunter/

‘Identity Crisis’ comprises six images of the artist, each taken by a different person in her life over the course of two weeks in 1974. Hunter asked them to take a photograph of how they saw her. In one image she wears a hard hat and looks defiantly out at the viewer. In another she is softly lit, fully made up with a pearl necklace and open shirt, the picture of alluring femininity. In yet another her hair is shaggy and she looks down, suggesting a vulnerability and lack of self-confidence.

Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen - 1975

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zSA9Rm2PZA

From A to Z, Rosler "shows and tells" the ingredients of the housewife's day, giving us a tour that names and mimics the ordinary with movements more samurai than suburban. Rosler's slashing gesture as she forms the letters of the alphabet in the air with a knife and fork, is a rebel gesture, punching through the "system of harnessed subjectivity" from the inside out. 

"I was concerned with something like the notion of Ôlanguage speaking the subject,' and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity." 
—Martha Rosler

Duane Michals

http://duanemichals.tumblr.com/
http://www.artnews.com/2013/07/29/duane-michals-fighting-against-photography/

In the 1960s, Duane Michals worked as a freelance fashion photographer and portraitist, while his artistic work began to address literary and philosophical ideas about death, gender and sexuality. Working with staged scenes, he experimented with multiple exposures, sequences and combining text and drawings with his images.

Woman: The Feminist Avant Garde from the 1970s

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jun/14/photoespana-seventies-feminist-avant-garde

Woman: The Feminist Avant Garde from the 1970s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUJlYsvdV7I
Cindy Sherman Doll Clothes (1975)

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2010/nov/21/francesca-woodman-photography#/?picture=368861099&index=9
Francesca Woodman.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artstu/

This is a recent photo shoot of mine, relating to my project.