By Fatmir Terziu
Despite their diversity, these artists have all succeeded in overcoming some formidable obstacles. They only invented the feminist side using photographic images, we need to popularise it.
The photography of female is going to be an interesting side everyday. It can be said that feminism and photography have created a strong
relationship between them. Berger in his book Ways of Seeing said that "men look at women and women watch t
hemselves being looked at" which concludes that this determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. Barthes described it as the "polysemic aspect" of the photographic image. Simone de Beauvoir when produced her monumental study of women's estate saw as "constitutive of feminity within patriarchy" and explained that "concept of feminity and masculinity may be a function of discourse and not of biology", while the former is "inevitably" positioned as other and the latter "invariably" as the one. Abigal Solomom - Godeau goes further in this point when said that "Otherness is celebrated and valorised, or perceived as a structure of oppression and subjugation".However the theorist's explained it in many ways this theory becomes more debatable and more questionable. If they explored that "the language asserts the primacy of the masculine term" and what Godeau said "ifthe women have historically accepted is that of the man, and if language and image ar
e already marked by that view" is already the main question of that "how and in what terms can the Other become the One?". De Beauvoir's point on "the analysis of the concept of sexual difference" lead Abigal Solomon-Godeau's investigation focuses on how this difference comes "into being", and "women from language" and, indeed, from all the symbolic systems in which a culture's reality is represented. And the final De Beauvoir's argument about "the act of specifying a condition of feminity" is "language asserts the primacy of the masculine term".Using the terms such as "masculine," "feminine," "man," "woman", is another critical point for Godeau in terms of forcing them for any assumption. He argues that the concept of a unitary and unified identity, has itself been jettisoned, psychoanalysis having been the first and perhaps most important discipline to do so. Godeau pointed his critics on this concept and said that Bob Dylan may confidently invoke those attributes conventionally descriptive of woman (what she is like), but the impulse of most modern thought is to insist precisely on its nondeterminacy. As such, attention is focused on the production of the subjectivity, and the production of the meaning.
One useful question raised by the debates around photographic images of women is how we differentiate a feminist political opposition to these images from a more traditional revulsion at the portrayal of aspects of the body that are normally kept hidden from public view. In terms of logical consequence to the recognition that sexuality and desire, subjectivity and meaning are all constructed in language, Godeau gives as example Jacques Lacan's infamous statement that woman does not exist (La femme elle n'existe pas). On this argument leads Godeau's comment "any conceptualisation of the "real" woman is logically both unknowable and unspeakable. Whatever, Laman's statement is: human beings become perceived and represented as objects.
In prefacing a discussion of the photographic work of Francesca Woodman, Godeau's argument is that Woodman's work announces neither a manifestly political agenda nor a specifically feminist orientation. Woodman's photography are serially conceived, themes and motives circulate, are elaborated, modified and reworked. Her work bears cryptic texts and shards of narrative or description. Woodman's three themes explored by Godeau are: First, staging of herself as the model for herself, (the artist), second, the constant insistence on the woman's body as both as sight (a spectacle) and a site (of meaning, desire, projection) and last as she appears to have grasped, and taken as the very substance of her work, the operations of fetishism as they are mobilised in the metamorphosis of female flesh into image (fetishism).
Godeau said that there is a sense in which all three of Woodman's themes are integrally related, indivisibly bound. Looking and arresting the looking produce her pictures, like those of any photographer. In placing herself, her body, in front of the lens, Woodman does in fact collapse the distinction between seer and seen, subject of the gaze and object of it, artist and model. The power of Woodman's images, their intensity and their beauty, does not in any case derive from their compatibility with theoretical ideas. Woodman's images in fact are focused on the woman's eyes and trying to reconstruct what a man sees. Mulvey contended that the male is unconsciously reminded of the traumatic moment when he recognised sexual difference.
Question's raise from many of the angles of looking at Woodman's images: "Do women see differently, be it as artists or spectators?". Godeau called "psychological delineation" what Woodman was adapting to her purposes a device shared by artists as dissimilar as Cindy Sherman, Les Krims, Nancy Dwyer, and Hannah Wilke. By staging her body in ways that appear deliberately calculated both to generate and emphasize what Laura Mulvey termed is "to-be-looked-at-ness" or what Godeau called "disturbance in the field" that Woodman creates by girding the torso with three garter belts instead of one, by suspending superfluous stockings from the wall. A Freudian approach considers the visual pleasure or scopophilia' is usually understood as an erotic pleasure gained in looking at another person or at images of other bodies. This pleasure is voyeuristic when it is dependent on the object of this gaze being unaware, not looking back.
Whether the gaze at the body provoked by Woodman's pictures is inflected narcissistically, voyeuristically, or fetishistically, the nature of that look must inevitably determine the meaning the spectator imputes to it. It is interesting in this context to compare Kruger's work, which attempts to direct her work to female spectator along the axis of language. According to Godeau, in contrast to Kruger's unmistakable stance, Woodman's production in general stages no act or defiant, provides meliorative construction.
Despite their diversity, these artists have all succeeded in overcoming some formidable obstacles. They only invented the feminist side using photographic images, we need to popularise it.
Friday, 6 July 2007
BUCK TEETH
By Fatmir Terziu
Fiction - Short Story
She had bought a new jumper and that afternoon she was the figure in the street. In a coffee shop in Wimbledon Village, Ana really was a charming girl. More academic, a little sharper in manner than any girls that Michael had known before. Michael would always say: “She is very harsh in judgments - especially of people. Less of homebody. But with a sly sexuality to her that is very attractive. It is very difficult, when talking to her, to take one’s eyes off the two large bumps in her sweater. I like the way she licks her fingers after eating doughnuts with jam. Running is the way she moves her head from side to side while talking. Another fact is that she has buck teeth” - something Michael has always found deeply erotic.
“Michael, Michael! Look here”, said Ana. Everyone turned their heads to look at Ana. Only Michael who was lost in a newspaper article didn’t hear her.
She moved around the tables and walked straight to him. She touched his shoulder and put her face close to his. Only then Michael looked up at Ana. Frightened and very tired he tried to hide what he was doing, by hugging her.
“Love, I called you… but you didn’t answer.” she said.
“Oh sorry, so sorry. I didn’t hear you.” Michael replied.
“Anyway, I was waiting for you at the corner of the Café.” she continued. “I have something to tell you. My mother at last agreed to our marriage!”
Michael murmurs to himself.
“Oh its fantastic Ana.” said Michael useless.
“Are you ok, Michael? I thought you were going to be happy; and to celebrate that we both were waiting for this moment. I don’t know what’s the matter with you?” Ana said, looking crossly at Michael.
“Sure, sure I am very happy. It’s nothing.”
“But why are you still frightened and weak?” she asked quickly.
“I am not frightened, I’m just a little bit tired, that’s all.” he replied and pulls her slowly to seat next to him. She seats down and asks what drink he wants.
“A Beck’s, of course.”
“Two Beck’s, please.” she calls to a waiter and then she got closer to Michael. She put her right hand on his back and with the other hand strokes him on the face. She kissed him and then moved back to where she was before.
“Excuse me, cold or… -” starts the waiter, but he was interrupted by both of them at once.
“Cold.” they both answered.
Michael goes back to reading the newspaper in a foreign language. Ana was cracking her knuckles.
“Ana, don’t crack your knuckles. Do you know why? A friend of mine, Auron, is doing a research about that in Oxford University. He told me yesterday that knuckling the fingers with leave with some heavy problems after fifties. If you continued this as you made before your hands after that age will be shaking and your fingers cannot stops ‘dancing’. Do you understand? So, please be careful?
“I believe that is true, because I have read an article similar to that you told me about your friends study. I don’t know exactly what I am doing sometimes, just knuckling fingers.” she said and again made herself very close to Michael, kissing him on lips.
“What is so important in that paper?” asked few second later Ana.
“It’s an article, it’s about Me.” he replied.
“About you?”
“Yes, about me.”
“Tell me then, what is it about?”
“Somebody else called me a liar. Do you know, this journalist quoted some words under my name that I have never said? He said that I am from Greece and not from …” said Michael pointing with his finger at the article in the newspaper.
“Wait a minute! What did you say?” Ana cried.
“I said that the journalist wrote that: ‘Michael K. a PHD academic and lecture at STH is from Albania. He lied on his CV and his documents and said that he is from Greece. Why he has done this is not plain, but it is up to him to talk…’. Can you believe this guy? Who is he to lie about people? Now do you understand why I am upset?”
“I understand, but do you want to know something? Some of my friends said the same thing, before this article to be published. My mother too. I am the only person who believes you. I am not stupid, but my love for you made me close my eyes and block my ears. Do you want to know what people in this café have said hundred times to me about you? Do you…”
“Oh wait a minute. I never knew people spoke about me behind my back. What’s the matter with them? Does one of them feed the writer of this article with this rubbish? Did these people misinform your mother and write a fictive report to the Home Office a week ago? I cleared myself to the authorities by facts and documents and thought that that would be it, I didn’t want to worry you.”
“You have been hiding this for me? I never knew this had gone as far as the authorities? Why? Why? Why?”
“That ‘Why’ is exactly what you and your friends have to find out, it’s not my duty. I don’t care what people are saying as long as I am not a liar and I am not in trouble with the authorities. Look at this. This is a document in which the authorities apologize to me and to my University department.”
“You make me laugh. Do you think I am stupid? That is enough, Dr. Michael.” Ana shouted and pushed the chair away. “Goodbye.”
“You never believed me? Ok then, Goodbye!” he replied.
Ana passed way straight the cashier and paid for the beers that she drinks with Michael and for the doughnuts that she eats early. Michael never stops looking at her until she disappeared. He asks for another Beck’s and back to the article.
“Hi, Michael!”
“Hi, Michel!”
“Where is Ana?”
“She just left. She is gone.”
“Emergency, any problems…?”
“Oh no, no Michel.”
“Can I take a seat here?” Asked Michel.
“Of course.” answered Michael.
“So how you doing at Uni? It’s hard job.”
“No really, no. But nothing is easy. I’m sorry do you fancy drink?”
“Yes. Same as you please.”
“Two Beck’s pleased? Asked Michael.
The waiter takes notes in his notebook and sends the Beck’s with reseed.
“It’s about Michael!” was almost the first thing she said. I would have preferred her to say something along the lines of’ I can’t stop thinking about you!” or “I am deeply drawn to middle-aged men!”, but something I have learned with advancing age is that it is often easy to draw conversations back to oneself if you allow your partner to drone on about what they want to talk about first.
To be continued...
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