Gazing At Photographs

Fascinating Looks: Voyeurism

This subject is one I have not really considered much, although I am unsure why. Within my photography practice, I do not consider myself voyeuristic, I do not choose people as my subjects but am I still in the genres and subjects I choose? I am not voyeuristic in the sexualised sense, but I look at things around me, my project is based upon this. By doing this am I invading the privacy of those objects, alive, dead or decaying?

My own thoughts on observing and gazing at the human body is one of normality. I have never had an issue with nudity in photography and art, and even within life. I believe this to be down to my fine art education where the human form, clothed or not, was looked upon as body, natural and not sexualised. I believe this has affected how I see voyeuristic photography and works such as Helmut Newton’s as a famous example, as just naked women, bodies and personally not offended by this, but I understand how others may be offended. This could also be down to my interest in the human body and biology in general, where maybe I have become desensitised to the naked body.

Does this then make me guilty of voyeurism? I am an observer; I stand back and watch the world and a people watcher we may call. Therefore, watching people go by and observing I am being voyeuristic in nature, intruding on their privacy, at the same time I would not consider documenting my observations photographically as I feel uncomfortable doing so, instead of what is innocent observing this would for me become spying.

Within my current project, I am exploring an underlying relationship between my body and nature. Concentrating on the delicate structures of natural forms, currently leaf skeletons, which resemble the fragility of our skeleton and my own. A practitioner I have been looking into is Liz Orton, whose four year work Every Body Is An Archive (2014-2018) deals with the relationship between the human body and medical image. Part of this series, Chasing Intensities, looked at decontextualization of the medical image and Orton used images from Clark’s Positioning in Radiography, a manual for x-ray technicians, and placed them on a light box, taking the medical gaze away from the clinical view. Looking at these images, there is still as sense of the gaze, sexuality and voyeurism, how the images focus on certain areas of the body, you are allowed to look but still feel like you should not because of the context and they remind me of being x-rayed and that initial awkwardness of being viewed by a stranger, a radiographer and your body being analysed from within.

Fig 1: Liz Orton, 2014-2018, Every Body Is An Archive

Fig 2: Liz Orton, 2014-2018, Chasing Intensities, from Every Body Is An Archive

References:

Books:

Sontag, Susan, and Penguin. On Photography. London, Penguin Books, 1977, p. 55.

Websites:

Monarchi, Christiane. “Liz Orton: Humanising the Medical Gaze.” Photomonitor, 2021, photomonitor.co.uk/essay/liz-orton-humanising-the-medical-gaze-2/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.

---. “Chasing Intensities | Liz Orton.” Lizorton.com, 2021, www.lizorton.co.uk/photography/chasing-intensities/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

---. “Every Body Is an Archive | Liz Orton.” Lizorton.com, 2021, www.lizorton.co.uk/photography/chasing-intensities-figures-for-the-body/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

Photographic Museum of Humanity. “Chasing Intensities | Exhibition.” PHmuseum, 2021, phmuseum.com/exhibition/immanence/chasing-intensities. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

Images:

Orton, Liz. “Chasing Intensities,” Liz Orton, www.lizorton.co.uk/photography/chasing-intensities/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

---. “Every Body Is an Archive,” Lizorton.com, 2019, www.lizorton.co.uk/photography/chasing-intensities-figures-for-the-body/. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.

Figures:

Fig 1: Liz Orton, 2014-2018, Every Body Is An Archive

Fig 2: Liz Orton, 2014-2018, Chasing Intensities, from Every Body Is An Archive