Text On Method - Paula

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.

A short note on my background and my work as an editorial photographer

I have been trained as a photographer at a German university with its strength in documentary photography. Since my graduation five years ago I've been working as an editorial photographer, mainly taking portraits for magazines. In this work I pay much attention to composition, colors (as a key element for composition) and naturally framing. I like to use flash and tend to place the subject in the center of the image. I don't work in a narrative way, not telling stories in a sequence of photographs. I rather have my subject become a part of their surroundings in one single image. I usually have the subjects looking into the camera, thus being aware of being photographed. These are all elements that can be found in my artistic work as well.

The most significant part of the work though is the engagement with the subject. Often I work with people who are normally not being photographed, so a big part of my work is to create an environment in which the subject feels comfortable. I have to be able to make them like me or at least feel confident and trust me, often in a very short amount of time. As someone who is supersensitive to the emotions of others, this is a special challenge for me as a photographer. You have to be able to use your emotions to influence the emotions of your subject in order to regulate the atmosphere of the environment in the way you the image to turn out.

My previous work

Like in my work as an editorial photographer, also in my artistic work I take straightforward images of people often flashed, composed and centered. Throughout the past years I have been developing a photo practice that is project-specific and involves photographing other people. Recurring themes in my works are desire, sexuality, gender and representation and I usually work in a serial way. (Why?)

My work is very much informed by ideas rooted in Queer Theory.

Exceptional Encounters is a project I did during the course of a couple of months in 2011. 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 come 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 and how I feel excluded from the audience. I talk about the absence of female desire manifesting itself in the male form and how female artists tend to work with the female form addressing feminist issues. I talk about a missing image tradition when it comes to the male nude from a female, feminist perspective. I talk about how this lack of female sexuality in lens-based art, also has an effect on the way we understand sexuality: the active male viewer and the passive female object. I talk about the traditional division between the man behind the camera and the woman in front of it. These are not a new thoughts and have been addressed by many Queer Theorists, Feminists and Art Historians. People like John Berger has talked about the importance of considering the spectator of an image as an important part in the power triangle between model, artist and spectator. He points out that almost all post-Renaissance European sexual imagery is frontal - either literally or metaphorically - because the sexual protagonist is the spectator-owner looking at it. xxx

When comparing my two works Exceptional Encounters and Centerfolds which both depict somewhat naked men, I talk about the genre of the nude and how it pretends to come across all natural while really it's a very specific construction. Not only a construction of an image but also of our ideas about sexuality. I talk about the distinction of the naked portrait and the nude.

-> Connection photos & oil paintings?

-> Gender as a category in Art History?

Also here 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. [< (steve asks) yes, but what is the value here, in terms of personal relationships, what does that bring to the work? What does that approach produce? You set up a personal encounter, what does that encounter produce for you and for the subject?]

Trying out a different approach

All the previous mentioned aspects remain important to me and my work. But what if I talk about another aspect of the work that's also a big part of it? What if I placed the emphasize on the personal motivation and told the spectators about my sense of adventure that lead me going into these situations?

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

HOW MY WORK AS A PHOTOGRAPHER INFLUENCES MY ARTISTIC PRACTICE

REFLECTING ON THE METHOD I USE PHOTOGRAPHING OTHERS

USING EMOTIONS AS TOOL SUBCONSCIOUSLY

NOW RESEARCHING THEORIES OF EMOTION AS SUCH

THEORIES OR TEXTS THAT INFLUENCED MY WORK

Bibliography

Berger, J. Ways of Seeing

The naked portrait