While reading this weeks articles I think I still had the quote Allan Sekula used to open Reading the Archive stuck in my head by Godard and Gorin “The invention of photography. For whom? Against whom?” Except this week when I started with Laura Mulvey’s essay I thought the gaze for whom? Against whom? Meaning I didn’t really follow her Freudian argument about castration anxiety and the idea of the cinematic gaze being male. I understand the argument (although by that logic it seems castration anxiety could be used to explain really almost anything) and I even agree that the cinematic gaze is mostly masculine (not male) and the cinematic operation she describes used to portray female characters either actively or passively are certainly still prevalent I kept thinking that it was also a very limited view that considered gender and desire in a very binary way I was thinking what about women who enjoy looking at women, men looking at men, etc

… but then I read the Butler article and it sort of turned Mulvey on its head. I’m still trying to parse the relationship between these two articles because I don’t think butler rules out the possibilities of a male or female gaze but she certainly does complicate it. Since gender is preformed a woman could have a male gaze (and also castration anxiety?) a man could be objectified (assaulted by this gaze) etc.

And then! Olin comes in and makes sense of everything for me in her article that was (lets be honest, for this weeks readings, a breath of fresh air where clarity of writing is concerned) most interesting to me in the way that it tried to considered the gaze in a positive and affirming way. To this point it seemed to have such a bad connotation and I think as a photographer I was feeling some serious guilt about my own scopophelia. However I think Olin is right on about the Walker Evans image. The gaze there is an equal exchange, the plea of Thou shalt not kill, etc. But I was also thinking couldn’t a sexualized “male” gaze be an equal exchange? I guess my thought was, is it such a bad thing if people enjoy being visually objectified? If they willingly consent to it? Couldn’t the Kruger text read “Your gaze lovingly caresses the side of my face, and that makes me feel good”? I liked that Olin was arguing for a wider interpretation of the gaze because I think that the experience of looking and being looked at can be everything to terrifying, to thrilling, to boring etc. and it all depends on the context.

I was thinking about the Abromovich performance at MoMA right now “The Artist is Present” where she sits at a table and looks at whomever sits across from her. This idea that looking can be a mutual, artistic, and what seems to me very thrilling experience is interesting. There is no other communication just sitting and looking and yet it seems like such a more embodied experience, it seems to involve much more than just vision. It made me think that the separation between vision and the other sense the Fried seemed to be arguing for is just… wrong. Here is Marina and her long lost lover Ulay. So Cute!