Text On Method - Paula

Current Practice (resource: here you can use the text made in the last session, interview...) What are you working on now?; (200) what do you want to work on? (200) Who can help you and how? (50)

Introduction

I just finished my latest work "worldpeace" which marks a change in my working practice as I'm working with found images for the first time. At the same time I started a writing practice in which I combine personal stories with fictional elements and images. In this text I will reflect on the new methods I use in my current practice and think about how the practice of writing can inform my future work as well as how it can change the perception of my previous work. With this text I will reconsider my artistic position.

My previous work

Throughout the past years I have been developing a photo practice which involves photographing other people and taking self portraits. Regarding photographing others, I prefer to work with real people instead of professional models. Finding strangers to pose and finding or creating settings for a session is an important aspect of my practice. Recurring themes in my works are desire, sexuality, gender and representation and I usually work in a serial way.

For my work Exceptional Encounters I contacted men on an online sex-dating website with the request to photograph them naked in hotel rooms. When I talk about the work I usually talk about how I miss the female gaze when I comes to work that engages with the topic of desire and sexuality. I talk about how the gaze on the male nude in photography has always almost exclusively been a male/gay gaze. This is not a new thought and has been discussed in Queer Theory engaging with art history. People like John Berger have talked about the power of the gaze

This is all still true to me and remains a striving force in my work. but what's also a big part of the work is it's performative aspect. The fact that I actually got myself as the artist and author on the one hand but also as a partitioner in a role play on the other hand.

The meetings with the strangers and the act of photographing them became a performative plot. I, the artist and image creator, served as projection screen for my models fantasy while they in return allowed me to take their image. The meetings were loaded with a sense of secrecy, fantasy and role play. The camera setting serves as an excuse to give in to a power play that involves no physical contact.

The notion of the camera setting as a surrogate.

How Queer Theory has informed my interest and practice Informed by Imagery of Western Art History Queering Art History Geschichte zu den Encounters umschreiben - die Treffen in den Vordergrund stellen Machtspiel