Electronic Learning Portfolio
For my project, I decided to show my images on two axises: from left to right is the body on a scale from feminine to masculine, while from top to bottom is the body as a genderless form. The middle image shows femininity and masculinity together, while still being abstracted enough to show a level of genderless-ness, the intersection of my concepts on gender.
Concept Phrases
Photographic map of male and female bodies oriented in ways that oppose their sexes.
Gender norms being transformed and blurred by the ways of acceptance and a refreshing eye for beauty.
Paragraph
For this project I would like to explore the technical uses of a film camera, using the 2-D medium to show the reality of gender norms in today’s society. Using four subjects, two biologically female and two biologically male, I will dress and position the subjects in such a way, with the use of clothing, make-up, and posing, that will blur their gender lines and make them look as if they were of the opposite sex. I will experiment with the use of lighting and staging, as well as the proceeding steps of developing the film.
Image Collage
These images show some of my ideas for lighting, angles, and expressive body language that I would like to emanate in my photo series. I especially would like to focus on poses that explore the range of motion of the body and the extent of its ability to abstract the human form. My lighting and camera positioning will highlight these qualities of the body.
Action Plan
This up coming weekend, with the help of a friend majoring in photography who is also well versed in film cameras, I will take photos of myself and one of the other subjects to see how the camera works and experiment with posing and lighting. I will then develop this film and see the results, after reviewing the photos I will either move on taking photos of the next two subjects, or photograph all four subjects with information gained from the first set of photos. I am hoping to do everything as soon as possible as I have to take in to account the time to develop the film and then assess whether or not the developed photos demonstrate what I want to show.
The piece I sketch, Guiro Cuff with Thimble, was a part of a larger exhibit of works focusing on wearable instruments. The creators of the piece, Arjen Noordeman and Christie Wright, made a beautiful piece that is sonically interesting and visually simple, with a sleek design and black color. The many pieces they made all encompasses these qualities and focus on the sub-culture of  Hip-Hop music, each piece making a sound viable for a beat to be rapped over. When drawing the piece I decided to sketch it with black ink to honor the simplicity of the original. I also believed that the contours of the wearable instrument spoke for themselves, with the curved lines of the bracelet and the point of the finger piece evoking the noises of ripples on wood without even hearing the actual noise it makes.
