riot grrrl ramblings

Rineke Dijkstra is a Dutch artist interested in photographing subjects in new and profound ways. She is one of the main artists I decided to research because of the amount of photographs she made that focused on women of all different types of ages, sizes and races. In this sense, her artwork is a feminist act in which she showcases women as they are, without any sense of commodification, oversexualization or expectations placed on them. Feminism is about accepting people as they are, without seeing any one person as better. In this piece, the subject is a female dressed in a black bathing suit, with an anklet on, her medium length dark hair. The artist does not reveal much, but at the same time, she reveals the girl’s self consciousness in the way that she is posed. In this series, the people are gazing directly at the audience. These young subjects are almost bare, showing themselves to the audience. It seems as though there is no camera in front of them. There is nothing in between ...

Hannah Wilke by Evelyne Zapata Self Portraiture; self-preservation and sensuality. These terms are all relevant to the well-known feminist Hannah Wilke’s art work. Throughout her short life, she presented herself in several settings all with one thing in common - they represent a sense of preservation for her and women in general. “Wilke used the various mediums of photography, performance, sculpture, and video to examine and challenge prevailing notions of femininity, feminism, and sexuality” (Guggenheim). “Hannah Wilke was an influential second-generation feminist artist whose work in sculpture and performance art challenged gender stereotypes and probed the relationship between aesthetics, eroticism, and politics. Wilke began her career as a sculptor, creating pieces in clay and terracotta that evoke both organic forms and female genitalia, a symbol of women’s empowerment in the 1970s” (Princeton Art Museum). One of the earliest works that Wilke made was when she was in her ...