In feminist theory, the female body as object has been subjected to strict defined social parameters such as form, appearanceand comportment in space.
(Dolezal, 2010) By this logic, feminism describes how the presence and absence of the bodyrelate to its participation in time and space. In photography, this participation centres our perceived orientation and notion ofhorizontal perspective.
Dolezal states that in photographs the body’s appearance and comportment is regarded as an objectfor a “present or imagined third-person spectator” (2010).
Compare trans artist Jonas N.T Becker’sThank G-d for Mississippi (2009) photographic series with that of the photographs from Tracey Moffatt’s exhibition BodyRemembers (2017).
Becker’s photographic series Thank G-d for Mississippi depicts common sites of fatal or near-fatalsuicide jumps in the artist’s home state of West Virginia.
By suspending a camera over cliffs and ledges, he records viewsonly seen by those once they have already jumped. Beautiful and disorientating, these works arrest time between “life anddeath” and speak of the implicating societal pressures as well as the disproportionately high suicide rate in West Virginia.
Moffatt’s series Body Remembers investigates identity and the self and refers to Moffatt’s own history of matrilinealdomestic servitude and of the broader legacy of colonisation – by portraying herself as a maid (or alluding to) in isolatedcolonial spaces, Moffatt examines intergenerational trauma of indigenous persons across time and place in Australia.
Research Question: Through visual analysis, how do Jonas N.T Becker and Tracey Moffat, in each of their respective photographic series, experiment with alternative vantage points to comment on the absent body (the vacated subject)
