Michelle Henning. The Subject as Object. Photography and the Human Body in Liz Wells (editor) (2009). Photography. A Critical Introduction. Routledge.
The politicisation of the body in photographs, is according to Henning, linked to an emergence of body politics that I would argue came largely from the feminist movement initially, questioning populist images of women and challenging the objectification of women in the media, in pornography etc. The body in crisis, Henning argues, be it from a disease or from the medical interventions offering radical transformed bodies gave rise to controversies about how the body could be portrayed. Henning states that "A photograph constructs different meanings for human bodies through the way it represents them, and through the circumstances in which it circulates" (p204). And photographs can either conform and/or represent dominant ideas or challenge the dominant ideas of what it means to be gay or lesbian, HIV positive, a women, transgender, black, muslim etc. Is it then more acceptable for people to represent their own realities? Either as a photographer or in a way that the subject who is object engages in the process? Certainly more and more photographers, such as Zanele Maholi, a black lesbian photographer from South Africa, and Robert Hamblin, a transman photographer from South Africa, have used their subject position and own experience to portray what it means to be lesbian, trans, in a particular time and context. Henning notes that "in all instances photographs do not simply speak of 'the body' but of particular bodies, of social groups and of the relationship of power between them." (p204) I dispute this to some extent - that one persons depiction/experience can be the reality of a social group - when there are many realities of that group - and that one set of images or a single image can represent all. What then of images taken by a photographer outside a a social group? I am constantly exploring the meaning for women of being HIV positive and yet it is not my experience. I do not want to objectify women, and yet I do want to represent the many "faces" of HIV, and explore how a virus impacts politically, socially and can destroy and distort body image and identity. In this, I try to involve women in what they want to reveal of themselves, but at the end of the day the images and interpretation are mine. When I first showed the set of foreign/bodies photographs to women living with HIV the response was interesting: for some women the images resonated with their own experiences - they were grateful that the reality of drugs had been demonstrated, and the the woman who was in the photographs was very brave. Some women, on the other hand were angry, and felt exposed, that the realites of their experiences where on show, their secret loathing was now in the public domain. For me personally, there is a great responsibility that goes with representation, that one cannot represent all, but that one needs to be ethical in how one does represent. This does not mean that one cannot be contraversial and
The politicisation of the body in photographs, is according to Henning, linked to an emergence of body politics that I would argue came largely from the feminist movement initially, questioning populist images of women and challenging the objectification of women in the media, in pornography etc. The body in crisis, Henning argues, be it from a disease or from the medical interventions offering radical transformed bodies gave rise to controversies about how the body could be portrayed. Henning states that "A photograph constructs different meanings for human bodies through the way it represents them, and through the circumstances in which it circulates" (p204). And photographs can either conform and/or represent dominant ideas or challenge the dominant ideas of what it means to be gay or lesbian, HIV positive, a women, transgender, black, muslim etc. Is it then more acceptable for people to represent their own realities? Either as a photographer or in a way that the subject who is object engages in the process? Certainly more and more photographers, such as Zanele Maholi, a black lesbian photographer from South Africa, and Robert Hamblin, a transman photographer from South Africa, have used their subject position and own experience to portray what it means to be lesbian, trans, in a particular time and context. Henning notes that "in all instances photographs do not simply speak of 'the body' but of particular bodies, of social groups and of the relationship of power between them." (p204) I dispute this to some extent - that one persons depiction/experience can be the reality of a social group - when there are many realities of that group - and that one set of images or a single image can represent all. What then of images taken by a photographer outside a a social group? I am constantly exploring the meaning for women of being HIV positive and yet it is not my experience. I do not want to objectify women, and yet I do want to represent the many "faces" of HIV, and explore how a virus impacts politically, socially and can destroy and distort body image and identity. In this, I try to involve women in what they want to reveal of themselves, but at the end of the day the images and interpretation are mine. When I first showed the set of foreign/bodies photographs to women living with HIV the response was interesting: for some women the images resonated with their own experiences - they were grateful that the reality of drugs had been demonstrated, and the the woman who was in the photographs was very brave. Some women, on the other hand were angry, and felt exposed, that the realites of their experiences where on show, their secret loathing was now in the public domain. For me personally, there is a great responsibility that goes with representation, that one cannot represent all, but that one needs to be ethical in how one does represent. This does not mean that one cannot be contraversial and