Historically, male artists have re-presented women through their eyes. The Female Gaze in Art and Photography redresses this imbalance, looks at art through women’s eyes. It shines a light on the work of twenty contemporary women artists and photographers from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and United States of America, placing these creatives and their works centre stage.
The female gaze is not singular; it is multifarious, often based on the creative’s lived experience. It positions subjects as whole people and not objects. The female gaze reclaims women’s bodies as repositories for multiple meanings. It emphasises the emotions of and intimacy between creator and subject, who are at times the same person.
The Female Gazein Art and Photography offers an empathetic re-presentation of women, men and those identifying as LGBQTIA+. The art and photography covered is also thematic, addressing issues affecting our lives today: love and loss; lifecycle of women; motherhood; gender, sexual and racial identity; the fractured self; autonomy and agency; strength, resilience and vulnerability; relationships; racism; marginalisation and diversity; feminism; migration and dispossession; and climate change among others.
The Female Gaze sits alongside and is a valuable addition to Charlotte Jansen’s Girl on Girl and Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men, showcasing the talent of women creatives in today’s world of art and photography.
Industry Reviews
The Sheila Foundation’s purpose is to overturn decades of gender bias by writing women artists back into Australian art history and ensuring equality for women artists today. To this end, The Female Gaze in Art and Photography plays an important role in alerting us to the political and social relevance and vibrancy of the work of contemporary women artists and the unique perspectives their art brings to bear on 21stcentury life. Through the work of the artists captured in these pages, selected and discussed by Anita Selzer, we can see and imagine a world in which the female gaze is honoured and nurtured, a world that embraces difference and diversity and in which equity is a given. The Female Gaze in Art and Photography reminds us of how far we have come and that there is still work to do. Kelly Gellatly, Chair, Sheila Foundation
The Female Gaze in Art and Photography is an insightful, accessible and intimate reflection of and on women artists whose work reconfigures the way we imagine the human subject and subjectivity in art and photography. Beautifully illustrated, this book offers a celebration of difference becoming visible.
Professor Barbara Bolt, University of Melbourne
