I saw Ã…sa talk about her work recently and I couldn’t wait to share it on here. The Boy & The Twins is an absolutely fabulous piece of work and her work in progress series Aryan looks absolutely superb also.
The way she interweaves the staged posed images of the boy against her own autobiographical images of her and her sister in their tomboy childhood is so beautiful and works so well. Coming from knowing quite a lot about and having experienced from others the issues and feelings around being transgender, I’ve felt in my own experiments how difficult a subject it is to tackle as an artist, as we are surrounded by imagery and projects on gender that I feel sometimes almost work against the feelings and reality of being transgender.
As far as I can see; to be trans is not necessarily to be flamboyant or loudly self-expressive, nor is it to comply to strict social rules on gender purely to blend in. It’s the ability to be yourself and be happy with that, much like everyone else. It’s not ABOUT becoming something else, it’s purely about being (and sometimes, becoming) yourself and being true to that. Anyway to move on, I love how she gently juxtaposes the two halves of boyhood. There’s a time in some trans individuals’ lives where they almost return to this boyhood or girlhood they perceive to have ‘missed’ and follow an accelerated version, returning back to secret dreams and desires they may have repressed (either consciously or subconsciously) from their childhood and perhaps adolescence. This idea is what comes across so strongly to me in the juxtaposing of the two images.
There’s an awkward sense of reflection on the part of Jacob, the boy; where it’s almost like the images of Johannesson and her sister become projections of his own subconscious past as perhaps two halves. Some might feel this split is about gender directly but others feel this split is between the physical body and the inner identity.
The Johannesson sisters are almost stalked by Jacob across the images, like he is observing them; perhaps their behaviour, perhaps just their twin-ness; much like one would observe animals on safari or in a zoo. Jacob’s poses suggest a sense of frustration and boredom which I feel is very telling of his own life story; there is always a lot of waiting and seeing involved.
Jacob holds a banana skin with a semi-clenched fist, his eyebrows sense a certain agitation, whether it’s because he is being photographed in the first place, play acting for the camera or if the image touches in on a subconscious frustration at the time. The banana’s reference to absence of full male genitalia is interesting especially as it appears like knuckle dusters, another subtle reference to masculinity.
Jacob and his partner stand on the path together; their clothes echo one another and they stand together staring out at us. The path looks fairly derelict and just behind them lies the remains of a broken children’s treehouse, once again whispering suggestions of boyhood. The image is named The Path, naturally echoing Jacob and many others’ journey ahead.
http://www.asajohannesson.com/
http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=504992&CategoryID=36646
As many of you are aware from my previous post, I’m exhibiting at theprintspace tomorrow evening (2nd February) until 28th February in a group show! I invite you all if it’s possible to come to the private view tomorrow from 7 until 9:30pm where free refreshments are provided, otherwise the exhibition is on Mon-Fri for the next month! Do tell if you see the exhibition, I’d love to hear what you think!
Man, that’s a long clumsy title, I do apologise.
As ever I’ve been busy researching locations, artists and writing lots. If anyone is interested I might include some of it on my blog, even though it’s not made for this purpose.
Last week I was surprised and pleased with a wonderful feature on my work by Creative Boom, do check it out and let me know what you think!
http://www.creativeboom.co.uk/london/lookbook/jasmine-gauthier/
Here are some more location scouting photographs that I find interesting for various reasons.
More photography from location scouting, these locations have something extra special about them and I can’t wait to shoot in them. More photographs to come soon!
As I was photographing inside the women’s homes, I was so aware of what was around me and with how much I wanted to escape that and seek a blank canvas. As I thought about it, I realised that perhaps I could focus more on the anticipation of motherhood rather than the boredom side of it and look at photographing in areas of play for the future children, looking at recreational grounds and playgrounds. I’m also photographing these places at a time of change, when light becomes dark, it’s a temporary stage of the day that happens and then quickly passes and I’m fascinated about working with it. Some of these locations are strange places, far away from homes and some are rundown or forgotten, all of this is looking at ideas surrounding the fears some women go through.
There are further location scouting images coming up next.
Sadly I’ve been unwell for over the last few weeks but I have been working as much as possible. Here are some photographs of my latest shoot a little while ago but soon you will see posts of some new shoots in recreational areas, moving away from the domestic into the open.
So if any of my readers follow me on twitter, you will know that I have just begun a project that is a study of pregnant women.
So for starters, if anyone is reading this and knows of any pregnant women in the UK (I’m willing to travel within reason so check with me)! I’m really friendly and I can’t believe how excited I am about this project.
Pregnancy, birth and children are a massive part of me, which might sound strange to some as I’m only 20 and feel nowhere near ready for having children. However, doing this project makes me feel so alive, so excited, to know that these women are holding a beautiful precious thing. I’m interested in the waiting with pregnancy, that there is a deadline as such… then the anticipation as well as the anxiety, essentially I’m interested in starting off documenting all these emotions, then I will see how it goes from there.
My main concern/interest at the moment is getting experience of photographing pregnant women and eventually photographing groups of pregnant women because I think there’s something unusual to photograph in that. So yes, here’s a little taster of what I’ve been photographing on my first shoot of the project. The beautiful Nasharie…
So as promised, here is a snippet of the 4000 photographs I took whilst I was away, they follow around the theme of being an island, being isolated, being alienated from everything and everyone. It’s about that reaching out from an island to connect to others and other objects. Hope you like them, tell me your thoughts.
http://www.bettinavonzwehl.com/main.html
I had a rather productive week in my research, I got the first piece of feedback on the work from Mauritius, so who knows when you’ll get some sort of finished edit. It’s still very rough so I might give a peek on here at what I was trying to achieve. Anyway, back to the original content of this blog.
Yesterday afternoon after a lecture, I decided to go see some exhibitions to get my creative juices flowing and visited three, which I will talk about individually. Today I will talk about Bettina von Zwehl’s piece Made Up Love Song, which is currently showing at the Purdy Hicks Gallery, Southwark.
I had had the pleasure of visiting Bettina whilst she was on a residency at the V&A earlier this year, where she was beginning to create this work. As 15 of us (being students) crowded around Bettina, she told us about her previous work such as her series shown at the Museum of Childhood and how she had come to start this piece of work.
Made Up Love Song is a series of portraits of an employee of the V&A, stood infront of a large window which inspired Bettina to return to continuously. This returning to the same place, the same pose, is a trait or at least a theme that runs through a lot of her work. As is her use of profiles. Her images have a delicasy to them which lends beautifully to the concept and execution of miniatures, it was no surprise that she was inspired by the miniatures collection at the V&A.
In miniaturising the portraits, I felt closer to these people, even though I felt like I was looking through a window myself into a world of miniature people. It felt like they were approachable, that you could let yourself read their emotions. Among the photographs of this beautiful woman, she had other portraits created in the same style.
What surprised me about these portraits is that my favourite photographs out of the selection shown at Purdy Hicks were when the subject is slightly turned towards the viewer. For me it was the same feeling as when you think something is a statue and then they suddenly move and you get the shock of your life, it’s that shock and drama in just including them that got me very excited.
Studying at London College of Communication, I get the priviledge of hearing her speak in a few weeks, so it will be interesting to see what she’ll say about how the work rounded off, whether it is in fact rounded off. To have seen the start of something and then the finished product is a wonderfully rare thing and I’ll be looking out at what Bettina gets up to next.
I would definitely recommend visiting Purdy Hicks (7th October-7th November 2011) and experience these photographs for yourself. Due to the nature of them, experiencing the prints in front of you is the only way you can really appreciate the depth and intimacy of them.
There is one quote I want to post from the press release which I thought was beautiful and really summed up the nature of the portraits and the relationship between photographer and subject.
When the Residency was all over, and I’d packed up all my things, I went back one last time to see if there were any traces from the broken glass, scratches in the stone floor. All I found were the scuffed out chalk marks left by Sophia and me. Two separate marks; Sophia’s position and mine.
Related Links
http://www.purdyhicks.com/bettina-von-zwehl_2011.php
http://www.purdyhicks.com/exhibitions/pressrelease/bettina-von-zwehl-press-release-2011.pdf
http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/research/research-staff-profiles/bettina-von-zwehl/
Concept Box 
