Habitats

CFA_Critical Annotation 2

in

 What ‘s the position of international students? Some people portrait us as transience, consumers of education as a product. Or potential residents/workers/citizens. Shanthi Robertson shows examples of how Australian media portrays international students in “Cash cows, backdoor migrants, or activist citizens? International students, citizenship, and rights in Australia”: 

“Typical articles from The Age newspaper about international students’ lives refer to them as the ‘visible invisibles’ prevented from ‘mixing with the locals’ by linguistic and cultural barriers (Stark 2005) and ‘living on the edge of society... cut off from the local community’ (Morton 2007). Students quoted in the articles reveal an internalized self-Othering, portraying themselves as quiet and reserved, in contrast to a ‘macho and outspoken’ Australian culture (Stark 2005). “

Followed by questions on how do international students dealing with their identity and belonging, I photograph international students and their temporary rooms in Melbourne.

Starting by using the traditional documentary photography method, I tend to keep a distance from my subjects and look at them in an objective way. At this point, I looked at Tiny Barney’s portrait series as well as other artists still scene type portrait series. I would set up lighting and also tell my subjects how to pose. Then I find out I was looking for more personal stories that can not be present by this kind of method. As I looked at Garry Winogrand’s “Animal” and Alessandra Sanguinetti’s “on the sixth day”, I was inspired by their method of using metaphors and poetic imagery to tell stories. Neil Massey’s Vietnam photobook collection also inspired me to think about how I want to present my works. I start to experiment on making zines in various sizes and edit my visual stories not necessary by timeline but more rely on visual connections between images.  As I keep researching on documentary photography, I begin to interested in the debate on whether the photographer has more power than the subject and the position of the photographer, are they outsider or insider? Does the identity of the photographer really matter? With these thoughts, I include Trent Parke, Kohei Yoshiyuki, and Sophie Calle’s work into my posts. This surveillance type of images also influenced me to experiment within my own practices. I also refer to Andrea Gursky’s extremely organized large scale photograph, as I tell the students to organize their belongings almost in an obsessive-compulsive way. Jill Soloway’s speech on the female gaze also inspired me on how to edit my works. I start to look into expanded documentary since my content shifted from using just one image to present their rooms to go deeper into each individual's stories and transfer them into visual narratives. Greenfield’s work” Generation Wealth” influenced me by how to talk and connect with subjects as well as tracking the subject within a time frame to compare and make a stronger statement on the theme. After deeper research on the expanded documentary from readings of franklin Stuart and Anna Raczynski, I become really interested in the idea that “the reality is what we construct for ourselves”.


The Female Gaze by Jill Soloway

in
“Yes, simply put, Protagonism is Propaganda.



Protagonism is Propaganda that protects and perpetuates privilege.



You would think the way I keep saying that I’m getting paid by the P’s. Jill, Tiff just called, can you do a master class, please use a lot of Ps. I said yes, I said yes I CAN do that.

​

If Protagonism is Propaganda that protects and perpetuates privilege, then my plan today is to inspire more women to grab hold of the gaze. Okay. Here we go. Jill just get to it already JESUS.



Now. In three parts. I wanna shoot something out of the center of this triangle by the time we’re done. Three parts, Like Mulvey’s.



Numero uno, I think the Female Gaze is a way of “feeling seeing”.



It could be thought of as a subjective camera that attempts to get inside the protagonist, especially when the protagonist is not a Chismale. It uses the frame to share and evoke a feeling of being in feeling, rather than seeing – the characters.

​

I take the camera and I say, hey, audience, I’m not just showing you this thing, I want you to really feel with me. I have my particular methods, our cinematographer, Jim Frohna, when he is holding the camera, his body is IN FEELING, not capturing but playing an action, like melting or oozing or allowing, he plays a feeling action…

​

Maybe you notice when you see this kind of filmmaking you FELL MORE. You get the FEELS when you watch, as the young people say.



Some examples of this version of the Female Gaze include Transparent, I Love Dick those are things I made – and many movies that are made by women —-



Things maybe that you watch where you say, I can tell a woman wrote and directed it



because I feel held but something that is invested in my FEELING in my body, the emotions are being prioritized over the action.



As a director I help make this happen by staying in my body as the actors work, by prioritizing all of the bodies on the set over the equipment or the money or the time.



This was written by Hannah Wilke in 1976, about her art making, but her words help me get this across, she said:



“I am concerned with the creation of a formal imagery that is specifically female, a language that fuses mind and body into erotic objects that are name-able and at the same time, quite abstract. The content is always related to my own body and feelings, reflecting pleasure as well as pain, the ambiguity and complexity of emotions. Human gestures, multi-layered metaphysical symbols below the gut level translated into an art close to laughter.”



The Female Gaze. Part One. Reclaiming the body, using it with intention to communicate Feeling Seeing.



Part Two. I also think the Female Gaze is also using the camera to take on the very nuanced, occasionally impossible task of showing us how it feels to be THE OBJECT of the Gaze.

​

The camera talks out at you from its position as the receiver of the gaze. This piece of the triangle reps the Gazed gaze. This is how it feels to be seen.



I think Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank did that, and Kenny Lonergan’s Margaret, Eliza Hittman’s IT FELT LIKE LOVE – yes, the female gaze can be made by anyone, male or female, cis or trans —



These films use a kind of heroines journey structure – a looping around the inside of the body – now this is not just about a feeling but about a story shape where we revel in an ever more intense awareness of a protagonist’s power – I’d even say King of Comedy is a Heroine’s Journey in this way, we fall backwards with Rupert Pupkin, spiraling in an ever illuminated self-punishing story of having enraged or engaged the male gaze. In that case it was Jerry Lewis or fame.



In those other three cases though, we were more specifically in coming of age tales – come feel with me specifically how I become as I become what men see. It’s about what I’m doing by being seen — my effect — this is what it causes in the world.

​

The gazed gaze.



This third thing involves the way THE FEMALE GAZE DARES to return the gaze. It’s not the gazed gaze. It’s the gaze on the gazers. It’s about how it feels to stand here in the world HAVING BEEN SEEN our entire lives.

​

Or, in a line I heard in a web series today, we don’t write culture, we’re written by it.



It says WE SEE YOU, SEEING US.



It says, I don’t want to be the OBJECT any longer, I would like to be the SUBJECT, and with that SUBJECTIVITY I can name you as the OBJECT.”
— https://www.toppleproductions.com/the-female-gaze

David Wadelton "SUBURBAN BAROQUE"

in

‘Suburban Baroque’ brings together a selection of David Wadelton’s photographs of the vanishing mid-century suburban interiors of the formerly working-class northern areas that were the destination of choice for many post-war immigrants from Europe. The once-ubiquitous terrazzo, balustrades, marble columns and lions and other manifestations of pride and nostalgia for their homelands have become increasingly rare as the years pass, generations change, and gentrification takes place. The rooms are redolent of a different era and imbued with pathos, as most were the pride and joy of a generation that is passing.

Edward Hopper Morning Sun

in

Hobbs, Robert Carleton, Hopper, Edward, and National Museum of American Art. Edward Hopper. The Library of American Art. New York: H.N. Abrams, in Association with the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1987.


morning-sun.jpg