Saturday, March 14, 2009

Artist Statement

This collection of images focuses primarily on women's body image issues and more specifically, issues around eating disorders. The format in which the images are displayed is significant because it represents distortions a woman's mind may create when critiquing themselves in the mirror.  Each woman's gaze is unique in such a way that it relates directly to the individuals judgments, reservations, thoughts, and perceptions of their own body.  Contrary to the individuals gaze is that of the onlooker.  This may include the fashion industry, advertising, cosmetic industry, diet industry, entertainment industry, you, me and anyone else who's eyes cross paths with the subject.  
The viewer is forced to pick apart every single fragment of the body.  By piecing together a number of individual photographs to create one life size image, you are not only seeing the whole, but also zooming in on specific details that may have gone unnoticed otherwise.  You are forced to view these women both through the eyes of the media and the minds within the representative bodies.  Pieces of the body are missing while other parts are enlarged and disfigured creating a disordered image in whole.  
Fragmentation makes these girls appear larger in some areas, smaller in others, but regardless, incomplete and insufficient.  This is a direct correlation of the outstanding physical expectations placed upon women; perfection is unattainable.  Just as the onlooker sees an incomplete body before them, it is accurate to say that is what is viewed directly within the psyche of the subject; physical fragmentation resulting from mental damage.  This is what image culture has done to these women.

      

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