She wants to die in her best lingerie
With this body of work I am killing the victim inside every woman. In order to rid her of this role, I must kill, end, and delete those ideas from her mind and body.
Visually women are supposed to be eye pleasing: attractive, skinny, and happy. By photographing women dieing barely clad, I am using societies notions from advertising of what a woman should wear to be sexy as a device to reinforce and break the stereotype. I attempt this by first showing how society views women, and then placing those ideas into images of death.
When I ask each woman that I photograph how she would like to die, she usually responds “in the bathtubâ€, “by overdoseâ€, or “by hanging.†This is an indication that movies and television teach women that they need to die in a way that will preserve their beauty. Even these choices of committing suicide women are still the submissive role.
At first glance some of the pieces in the series may seem like traditional nudes, but once the viewer comes closer, he or she sees that the women appear to be dead. My intention is to provoke this interaction between the viewer and the photograph because it may cause him or her to question established stereotypes by using an established photographic convention. The viewer may then also come to understand the use of death in my photographs.
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i had the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it was not much better because i had always known that the grave was there and waiting for me.