Fe/male
June 1, 2019
1. Some time ago, I was introduced to a new collegue at work. I had not met her before, but I knew her name because I follow her on Instagram. She follows me too, but didn’t know that was me. When I told her she said: “Based on your pictures I thought you were male.” 

2. I read this blog post, about womens only photography competitions. I also read some of the comments in the FlakPhoto Facebook group on this post. One of them said: 

“The male gaze and the female gaze are so incredibly different. Not better or worse, just different. We can start talking about measuring work side-by-side without consideration of who took the photo when representation in the field becomes more equal.”

And another:

“Certainly all my work is from a female perspective, both because I am female and because most of my work is personal to my life.”

I never think of my work as gender biased, as male, or female. For me it’s just human. Personal, yes, so probably inherently female, because I am, but I don’t know how to identify that perspective and I’m not looking for it. I’m having a blind spot for ‘woman’s artistic voices’ being a thing. I just fail to see them as a separate category that should be favoured or set aside, nor would I want to.