2027 SPE Annual Conference: Community in Contrast
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print this pageEthics and the Photographer's Gaze
Friday, October 23 - 11:00AM to 11:45AM
WCAD 101
When thinking is equated with seeing, and our concept of vision is equated with objectification, our concept of what the world may offer--especially to a photographer--is greatly narrowed. The act of seeing can take many forms and be much more than the sedimented version often presented in traditional theories on vision and visuality. Seeing things this way opens a potential counternarrative to the aggressive, objectifying gaze described in much writing on photography including Susan Sontag's early writings, Laura Mulvey's essay on narrative cinema, and others. Writings which echo the bleak picture of vision photography has inherited from continental philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sarte, Michel Foucault and others.
Film director Joey Soloway provides one such example by identifying three key elements the female gaze brings to image-making. The first emphasizes "feelingseeing." More than just capturing an image, it prioritizes an embodied feeling toward the subject over equipment, lighting and other technical concerns. Picturing how it feels to be seen, and creating images in which the subject returns the gaze of the viewer make up the second and third elements of Soloway's female gaze.
Soloway's descriptions mirror feminist-phenomenological ways of seeing, and this presentation will consider the writings of Maurice Merleau Ponty, Emmanual Levinas, Simone De Beauvoir and others as backgrounds that inform these conceptualizations of the photographer's gaze. This presentation will use these descriptions to focus on the work of documentary photographer Maddie McGarvey to explore ways this approach is visible in her still photography and integral to her photographic practice.
Taken as a whole, this presentation will offer a picture of photographic seeing that moves past the negative visual narrative photography has inherited, and seeks the components of an ethical photographic gaze.
speaker
William Nieberding
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