Photography as Gaze, Painting as Caress

Abstract

Photography and painting have been posited as antagonistic mediums since the former’s inception in the 19th century, and despite generations of artists working across the mediums and disavowing the divide, it still looms large in our cultural imagination. This paper discusses the history of photography and painting as critical adversaries and practical allies, from both a historical and conceptual perspective, with a final segue to the history of gendered looking in art, and the rarity of a ‘female gaze’. My master’s work comprises a series of paintings that are in conversation with photographs I have taken of my partner sleeping. Using intimate portraits in a combination of painting and photography I attempt to draw out dissonant attitudes to authenticity, artistic value and the ‘reality content’ of images. The work interrogates our disparate reactions between photographs and paintings that recreate photographs, using the unique strengths of each to challenge and complicate our instinctive ‘reading’ of the image. They are diverse in style and presentation, while constant in subject. The examination/exhibition will take place in June at the SCA Galleries, and will consist of at least ten paintings on various media (including but not limited to paper, glass, aluminium, and wood).