Why did the male nude become an object of spectacle and erotic display in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Why was the male nude later eclipsed by the female nude? Why have historians ignored this 'crisis' in the representation of masculinity, characterized by a taste for feminized male bodies? In this pioneering and compelling book, Abigail Solomon-Gode Why did the male nude become an object of spectacle and erotic display in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Why was the male nude later eclipsed by the female nude? Why have historians ignored this 'crisis' in the representation of masculinity, characterized by a taste for feminized male bodies?
'Abigail solomon godeau essays on abortion Abortion godeau essays on Abigail solomon Comparative essay format ap world history units essay writing competition 2014 online nyc essay writing format for middle school diploma education essay vocabulary.' 'Abigail solomon godeau essays on friendship Abigail solomon godeau essays on friendship. Reading intentions and notes are stored against your user profile. Please create a profile to use this feature.
In this pioneering and compelling book, Abigail Solomon-Godeau shows that the masculine ideal, whether in the guise of martial, virile heroes or languishing, disempowered youths, raises important questions about the fashioning of masculinity itself. Examining the different forms of ideal manhood in relation to the cataclysms of the French Revolution and to international Neoclassicism, she explores how and why the beautiful male body dominated the visual culture of the time and appealed so powerfully to male spectators. Drawing on feminist, psychoanalytic, and critical theory, as well as on art and cultural history, Solomon-Godeau proposes a radical revision of Neoclassical visual culture as it relates to the emerging bourgeois order, demonstrating how both reflect the status of women. I absolutely love this book, and I love Abigail Solomon-Godeau as well. That being said, the book is - sadly for me - a little over my head. It has been taking me forever to read.
I think it is fascinating, though, and have used many ideas in it to inspire my exploration of art and photography. I don't exactly know if I'll finish reading it, but I do love to pour through the photos now. I did read her other book - photography at the dock and could follow through to her conclusion and get a lot o I absolutely love this book, and I love Abigail Solomon-Godeau as well. That being said, the book is - sadly for me - a little over my head. It has been taking me forever to read. I think it is fascinating, though, and have used many ideas in it to inspire my exploration of art and photography. I don't exactly know if I'll finish reading it, but I do love to pour through the photos now.
I did read her other book - photography at the dock and could follow through to her conclusion and get a lot out of it. I guess what is amazing about Solomon-Godeau is that you CAN get a lot out of her ideas even if you don't fully understand them. This review sounds SO unprofessional.
Anyway, her ideas about homosociality are fascinating. The simple understanding - backed with data - that gender roles have been fluid and have gone through oscillating cycles throughout history is one that any child of relativism must know about. It is filled with factoids that you can use to throw at homophobic anti-gay protesters who insist that men and women have always been separate. That's useful, I think.
It's just so solid. I haven't read enough art history, and it's been an awesome, yet overwhelming introduction to the field.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau This question of inside or outside is for me one of the more interesting questions in connection with documentary photography as it is at least something of which I have a little personal experience so feel much more confident about expressing a particular view. This also the most interesting for me of the three topics covered by this section of the course, and this the most interesting essay. Once more though I do not think that ultimately there is any right or wrong answer. Firstly, despite what it says in the course material I did not in fact find it that hard to track down a copy of the original essay and so have not had to rely just on La Grange’s summary. The link I came across is cited below.
(As an aside, I was a little puzzled why La Grange took issue with Solomon-Godeau’s use of the word “liminal”. HIs book was first published in 2005, not so long ago, and I am sure I came across the use of this word before then. It is certainly in the Oxford Dictionary now and there is nothing to suggest it is a neologism, or at least not a recent one. The root, which La Grange rightly speculated was the latin word “limen”, is certainly not a recent usage – I have a dictionary that dates back to 1940 which defines it in the same way that liminal is now defined.
Hey ho.) I like this essay in part from its inherent uncertainty. Although Solomon-Godeau starts with the fairly straightforward, dichotomous question, inside or out, I find it refreshing that at the end she accepts a position of uncertainty and poses the question whether the photographer does, or even should, occupy a liminal position. This is certainly very much how I feel about documentary photography. It is not so simple as just to ask whether one has to be an insider to take successful documentary photographs (whatever a successful project might in fact be).
Let me look at a few examples that fall within my own experience of the work of others and my own. This is by no means exhaustive or comprehensive, and is probably quite partial and very subjective but nevertheless I feel valid in the context of my own learning. Clearly being an insider can give a degree of access to a subject and insights that would not necessarily be available to an outsider. I can though nevertheless see drawbacks, not least so far as objectivity and exploitation/voyeurism are concerned. To take briefly a couple of the examples cited in the article: Nan Goldin clearly has worked from the point of view of an insider. Indeed, in “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” in particular she is so much an insider that she features in many of the images herself. Of all of her work with which I am familiar )which in all honesty I must confess is not that much) this is the set that I like more than any other but it nevertheless leaves me with a sense of unease and discomfort.
Some aspects of the relationships portrayed are clearly abusive at worst and involve an arguably unhealthy dependency and power/weakness relationship at best. To that extent I personally feel that they stray over the line sometimes into voyeurism and the images themselves become as abusive as the relationships themselves. Also, to the extent that Goldin is herself a subject, I have doubts about the objectivity of some of the work.
Some of it (for example “Nan and Brian in bed”) just looks too staged. It must have been carefully staged, how else could Goldin take the picture and also be part of it? It does not necessarily make it a bad picture.
On the contrary, I feel this is one of the warmer and more sympathetic pictures in the whole set, but I do wonder where this sits in the realm of documentary photography. Is this not more autobiography than anything else and a carefully crafted autobiography that sets out to tell a particular story that is not the whole story?
Nan and Brian in Bed, 1981 – as used on the cover of the book Larry Clark is also mentioned in the article as an insider. This is perhaps an extreme example, and perhaps my reaction to his work is itself a bit extreme, but this is a case where I am of the view that the insider position can be counter-productive and lead to work that is not that good. To be candid, I do not like Clark’s work. I find his subject matter often objectionable – not necessarily what he portrays but the fact that he has decided to portray it and make public what would better be left private.
It also leaves me with a creepy sense of voyeurism and exploitation; the work strikes me as being more about satisfying Clark’s own needs, whatever they might be and I would rather not speculate, than offering an objective and reliable portrayal of certain ways of life. Perhaps for me one of the worst drawbacks of the insider position is exemplified by the recent practice of embedding war reporters within military units. War reporters have, I suppose, always been reliant to some extent on at least the goodwill or tolerance of units with which they have moved and interacted. It strikes me though that the modern practice is much more restrictive in that the journalist/photographer is effectively tied to one unit and cannot move anywhere without it. This opens up the problems of lack of objectivity and military control and censorship. If you only see a battle through the eyes of one unit you can only ever see a limited part of the whole.
Whatever work is produced can therefore only ever be partial, in the sense of incomplete or at out of context, and partial in the sense that it sees things only as that particular unit saw them. Censored in the sense that you only see what the unit will enable, or allow, you to see. (I do not wish to denigrate the work of those embedded in this way. They still do a difficult and dangerous job at risk to their own life and limb. Far too many journalists and photographers are killed. I just need to think of one of my personal heroes, Robert Capa, killed by a landmine in Vietnam.
I doubt that for many it can be easy to be so ‘chaperoned’ and restricted in what they can see and do. Perhaps though embedding actually provides a greater degree of physical safety and security than would be available to someone freelancing and ranging about a battle field?) But, the insider position is not necessarily bad. If I could give just one example of a documentary project that could arguably not have been completed successfully by an outsider I would choose the Ashington District Star project. Though conceived and guided by an outsider, Julian Germain, this project was run and curated by the people of Washington themselves, portraying themselves and their lives in a way that is solely within their control, portraying what was important and significant to them, showing their lives as they saw them themselves. Yes, some of the images are contrived in the sense that they were set up deliberately to relate to paintings by the Pitmen Painters. That does though from my point of view make them any the less valid.
They are still reflecting life as it is lived but also serve to put the current work into a deeper historical perspective: Once it was the pitmen who painted what they saw in their day-to-day lives, recorded what was important to them: now it is ‘citizen photographers’ doing the same thing with their digital cameras. Insofar as the people of Ashington themselves decide what images are to be shown it could be said that there is a danger of an element of lack of objectivity. I have to say though that I do not think that is a trap into which the work actually falls.
Some of the images that have appeared in the ‘newspaper’ editions are not necessarily that flattering. What makes them work for me overall is a sense of intimacy, sympathy, acceptance, indeed ownership. This is the life of the people of the area and this is how they have chosen to portray it! I have to confess I feel less certain of my views on this perspective.
As an outsider one can arguably achieve a greater degree of objectivity. On the other hand as an outsider one does not necessarily have the same sense of nuance that an insider might have and so be prone to failing to understand fully what is being observed. Dependent on the good will of the subjects the outsider is presumably in a potentially weaker or more difficult position, paradoxically, a bit like the insider, embedded war reporter; someone reliant on what the subjects are prepared to let one see, and so also able to portray, and interpret, what one is shown, which might not necessarily be ‘the truth’. When I first started to think about this issue I struggled to think of examples of good ‘outsider’ documentary work. Now I can see that I have been limited by the dichotomy and there are plenty of examples: just think again of the likes of Capa and McCullin, or Jean Mohr, or indeed, to bring us back full circle in a way, Dorothea Lange.
They were not embedded or particularly linked to their subjects. They were all serving other masters; the FSA, news agencies, the UN, their own drives and imperatives. However, what sets their, and it must be said that of many others apart, is that clearly they were able to gain the trust, respect, acceptance, of their subjects. At this point I think back again to the work of Marcus Bleasdale that I talked about in the previous post. He was clearly an outsider from the point of view of his subjects but clearly despite that was able to gain a degree of acceptance and trust, even from child soldiers, old before their time, no doubt traumatised themselves, wielding Kalashnikovs and pointing them straight at the camera lens! Marcus Bleasdale from The Price of Precious Only after having written this section did it occur to me that this picture in particular has parallels with William Klein’s New York work, where at least so far as these kids in Little Italy were concerned he was an outsider: These photographers seem to me to all support the view that Solomon-Godeau seems to have been reaching for tentatively at the end of her essay. The liminal These artists were, and are, it seems to me occupying positions that are better described as liminal.
They are somewhere between outside and inside. They are outsiders in the sense that they are not part of the communities (for want of a better word for now) portrayed, but are nevertheless close enough to be able to gain a degree of acceptance and access that would not be available to someone completely on the outside. Quite by coincidence while doing my initial research on this topic I came across the work of Paul Trevor. I had not seen his work in Liverpool in the 1970s before but it really struck a chord with me. In Rosler’s words these people might be regarded a victims. However it seems to me they were victims of the failures of the state, not of the photographer.
I do not detect any hint of voyeurism or exploitation. Trevor had clearly gained the trust and respect of his subjects, indeed even their affection – the title of his recent book was prompted by a comment by one of his subjects of forty or so years earlier when he was proposing a trip back to Liverpool: “Paul, its like you’ve never been away.” What he shows is the dignity of his subjects, poor people in a poor part of a deprived post-industrial city. There is no dignity in poverty but he shows their dignity as human beings coping with (not necessarily easily) with their material poverty, doing the best they could for themselves and particularly for their children.
If I had to pick just one image it would be “Mozart Street, Toxteth, Liverpool 8, 1975” showing a couple with their two young daughters. The wall-paper is peeling. The sofa has seen better days – the upholstery is clearly shot and has been covered by a throw. Nevertheless they are clearly a loving family, well-dressed, smiling children. Yes, it is clearly posed and no doubt the family are seeking to project the best image that they could, but equally they clearly accepted this outsider into their home, potentially putting them into a vulnerable position. There is a sense of occasion, a sense that this was something special that lights up all their faces. This is not voyeurism or exploitation.
This is something that this family, and all the others in the book, clearly took some pride in and welcomed, beyond just tolerating or accepting a nosey outsider. (I have not been able to find a copy of this picture on the internet that I can post here but it can at least be seen on-line at at pages 54-55.) By way of an aside, and going back for a moment to outsiders, shortly having discovered Paul Trevor’s work, I also came across the photographs of David Peat in a show about childhood at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh (on the subject of which I will be writing a separate post). His pictures of the Glasgow in 1968 were clearly taken, as were Trevor’s, from the point of view of an outsider. Although there is no sense of the same sort of rapport with the subjects the images are nevertheless often arresting and poignant.
Other examples that come to mind (very selectively it has to be admitted) include the Under Gods exhibition that I wrote on in my EYV blog , and the work of the Document Scotland group that I have also previously mentioned: they are outsiders in the sense they are not parts of the communities that they portray, but are to an extent insiders in so far as they are Scottish. They are working from somewhere in between. My own experience tells me that we work in a space between, a half-way house; in fact in what I would regard as a singularly privileged position, inside to give access and empathy, outside to give context and objectivity. I have elsewhere mentioned a project I completed before embarking upon the present course, documenting a day in the life of Hexham farmers’ market. Looking back I still feel this is some of the best work that I have done of a documentary nature. One of the reasons that this project worked for me was that I was able to enter that liminal space.
I was at the same time both and neither insider and outsider. I was clearly an outsider in that I was not a market trader. I was though an insider to the extent that for that particular day I was part of the market, having arranged ahead of time with the organiser and many individual traders that I could spend the day with them taking pictures, moving freely within and about it and the traders and separate from the customers shopping there that day. At the same time I was somewhere in between as I was nether trader nor customer but someone apart, performing a very different function from either. I was at the same time able to ‘get in’ but also to stand apart, take part in the activity of the market but also observe it from a distance.
What this project required, and what clearly Paul Trevor had with his subjects, was rapport. I had been shopping at the market for a decade before taking up this project and had got to know some of the traders quite well.
As a result, when I broached the subject, explaining that I needed to complete a project for a course of learning, most were happy to help and positively supportive. I was not being a voyeur or exploiting the market. I was, and of course still am, a customer.
I spend my money at the market. I was, I suppose, therefore not seen as an intruder. The result was a long, tiring – not to mention cold – day that produced a couple of sets of pictures that I was very happy with. Where does this leave me? What do I conclude from this somewhat rambling look at the specific questions about documentary photography raised in the course material? That no one view-point is necessarily right or wrong but that what is most important to me is trust and rapport, so that you can be both the privileged and accepted ‘insider’ but maintain the objectivity of the outsider.
That documentary photography at it best might well make an idealogical or political point but that it does not necessarily need to do so. It is possible to observe and record and portray things just as they are, without judgment or any particular agenda, simply because it is important, indeed crucial, just to record things as they appear. Berger, J, & Mohr, J, (1999). At the edge of the world. London: Reaction Books Golden, N, (1868). The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
New York: Aperture Klein, W, (2016). Life is Good & Good for You in New York. New York:Errata Editions Trevor, P, (2017). Like you’ve never been away. Liverpool: Bluecoat Press Peat, D, (2015). An eye on the street. Edinburgh: Renaissance Press.