I believe there is an intangible relationship women have with sexual desire and fear. Sex is exciting, enticing, and something we’re expected to achieve. The pleasure received from sex is not to be understated. However, women must also carry the burden of men’s violence against them. Precautionary actions of safety are not only encouraged, but normalized in the span of a woman’s life. I am fascinated by this normalization of the fear and how it affects the way women desire.
Women have to carry around contradictions – to love men is to fall prey to them. The act of sex itself is complex and even violent at times. The photographs are filled with contradictions too. You see me (the photographer) loving men, being afraid of men, and sometimes somewhere in between. When the project is presented in full, I want the wholesome images to look scary and the scary images to look wholesome.
Many women before me have tried to define the Female Gaze. While that is not my intention, I recognize that women have to make men look “wrong” or “unsexy” to define it as female. This being because showing men with a western male gaze reads as homosexual before it reads as the desire of a woman. I want to move that conversation further into thinking about how a lifelong, ever-present fear of men affects the way we see them.
Truth is important in the work as well. It’s not all the same man, so who are these men to me? At times you see the same man can be portrayed favorably and unfavorably. Ultimately the search for truth is futile. It’s not a love story.
