Parnell Johnson, Sukey (2018) Hagging the image: challenging the role of photographic images in contemporary narratives of ageing femaleness in Anglo American culture. Doctoral thesis, University of West London.

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Abstract

Contemporary feminist and academic writing on issues of age and representation in Anglo-American societies has been concerned with a relative lack of images of older women, demeaning stereotypical portrayals and combined issues of ageism and sexism playing out and through images in visual media. (Friedan, 1993, Dolan et al., 2013, Plunkett, 2012, Richards, 2012, White, 2012) In this dissertation, I critically examine the aesthetic practices and performative issues surrounding the representation of ageing femaleness in photographic imagery in Western culture that tacitly support an ageist sexist ‘youthful gaze’ to ask: What artistic approach can critically negotiate and challenge the complexities that ageing femaleness represents? Focusing my analysis in three case studies clustered around issues of age, power and beauty, I identify the persistence of stereotypical tropes in aesthetic treatments – carnivalesque reversal and de-ikonised aestheticisation – as the two polarising components of a binary visual regime that constrains ageing female identity. Using my findings as the basis to forge an artistic approach that can critically address the complexities that ageing femaleness presents when captured in still photography, I drew on the work of Laura Mulvey and Judith Butler and my own background in theatre to forge a new approach that can encompass the difficulties in transactions from both sides of the camera ‘in the round’.
The installation filmwork Hagging the Image (2015) was my critical response to the findings of my research. Employing the idea of theatre-in-the-round, this filmwork gives voice to women’s thoughts, rather than making them solely the object of the youthful structure of the gaze, mutely ‘captured’ in still images. Instead, the audience hears the infinite variety and contesting points of view of the women, presented to the audience in a filmwork that is part performative and part theatrical to heighten an awareness of the complexity of the cultural forces currently playing out in society around images of older women.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identifier:	10.36828/poxp9384
Subjects:	Media > Photography Arts
Depositing User:	Jisc Router
Date Deposited:	07 Mar 2023 15:19
Last Modified:	12 May 2023 11:11
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/9833

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