My undergraduate thesis project, titled “Do You Know Who You Are?”, explores the central question of what is the female gaze from the perspective of young women? I created a photo book on this introspective project that challenges the audience by questioning how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we see women. Oftentimes, the female body is viewed as a sexual entity and seen from the male’s perspective, known as the male gaze. The female gaze is an undefined term. What is the female gaze? How is the female gaze influenced by a male-dominated society, where the female body is often portrayed as a sexual entity?
Discovering who you are is an intimate, internal battle. My images hold a sense of elegance and intimacy. I strove to showcase the female body in a way that is not to serve anyone. Most of the images were taken on a time-lapse/interval sequence in an effort to capture a more candid/naturalistic look. The intentional blur delves into the unclear idea of not knowing who we are. I felt that the way we see ourselves is a mixed, hazy gray viewpoint. There are good days filled with compassion and worse days with self-deprecation. I felt, as a young adult, there is a lot of gray haze around self-discovery, which I tried to capture through the images. Having intimate portraiture images paired with nature photos offers a connection between a vast outside world and our intimate self. How do we see ourselves, and how much of that is manipulated by how the world portrays women? These images are part of a larger photo book collection, which won the Fall 2022 Undergraduate Student Research Award for Art at Pace University.
