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Women throughout the ages

This project in on the depiction of women through the decades - inspired by Linder I experimented with collage.

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Summertime

From under the bridges in Nottingham, to that restaurant table and the mountains of Spain.

HiMont Digital Kid’s Camera

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This is a further collection of images from my summer….

At 17, I was always aware it was my last summer as a child. I shot it on a kid’s camera, and loved the simplistic grainy quality.

HiMont Digital Kid’s Camera

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My critical essay on a photographer - Linder Stirling

I first came across Linder Stirling’s work in Year 9 whilst studying for my Silver Arts Award. I went to see her exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, and right away loved the way it challenged the normal ways we’re supposed to think of glamour and femininity.

As a 14 year old girl, I was learning about what it was to be a woman. Sometimes society’s expectations didn’t match my inner feelings.

I’ve always enjoyed experimenting with collage myself. And the way Linder took traditionally glamorous and sexualised images of women, and through collage transformed them into powerful messages really inspired me.

I like the way when looking at Linder’s photographs, you can experience them in your own way. And that might not be in the way someone next to you is. What you take from them and the way she’s manipulated the images is up to you, or maybe up to what pressures you’re under at the time.

Since seeing her work as a young teen, I’ve read lots of interviews with Linder, and recently found one in The Guardian from 2015, when she summed up her motive behind her work, she said:

“I use the collages to burst that bubble of gorgeousness in those glamour magazines. All those images are quite fragile and it doesn’t take much to hijack them and take them somewhere they shouldn’t go.”

Interesting fact!!

Linder changed her name from Linda. Which some people say was part of her challenging gender and expectations - the ‘a’ ending being more feminine in most languages.

I was fascinated by this when I was younger. And as I was questioning who I was, issues around sexuality and gender, I began asking that I be called ‘Ro’ instead of ‘Rosie’. Rosie had started to feel overly feminine to sit comfortably with me.

Ahead of her time

Some probably think of it more of a thing of my own generation to really look at sex and gender and question the spectrum of those issues. It’s probably only in the last five to ten years that people have asked for your pronouns for instance.

But through her images, decades ago, Linder was challenging gender labels and what we mean by being female. And whether it’s even useful to make those kinds of distinctions.

Crazy woman

Linder covered herself in paint to portray and challenge the notion of crazy woman. I think again this is something that’s been more discussed in recent times. For example when a man is angry they’re often just as angry, where a woman might be called crazy.

Porn and Linder

If I was pushed for a criticism, it would be Linder’s use of pornography, without much explanation when presented. People aware of her opinions on porn (she was clearly anti) would understand how she’s using it, but those just glancing might see it as pornography in itself.