Judy Dater
Judy Dater (born 1941) began taking photographs in the 1960s. Her work explored portraits, self-portraits, the narrative that shows the women and how they are seen and perhaps trying to capture women's inner self through the images. The Smith Anderson North Gallery states: 'Dater's early work, which was created as the Feminist Movement was gaining momentum, focused on the liberation of (and the perception of) the female form. At this time, when female frontal nudity was still considered risqué in American fine art photography' (Smith Anderson North: 2020)
The image is one of a series of self-portraits of Dater in the landscape this combination of the female form in nature exposes the force of women as nature. These images are beautifully photographed to frame Dater in the landscape - her body becoming part of the earth, the stone, the soil. Below in Maggie Smoking this portrait of a woman directly looking out challenges traditional images of women nudes in art as the women directly stares out at the viewer. The viewer is now looked at and to look upon her the viewer has to meet her gaze. John Berger in Ways of Seeing wrote extensively about this so I won't expand on this as Berger obviously expresses this far better! Berger states; 'In the art-form of the European nude the painters and spectator-owners were usually men and the persons treated as objects, usually women. This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women. They do to themselves what men do to them. They survey, like men, their own feminity.' (Berger J 1972)
In my own self portraits from this session I incoporated all the things that please me within an image very simply to express myself - I look out at the viewer but perhaps not with enough defiance, perhaps a little too passively - this has always been as Berger states a problem in taking my own image. The camera essentially takes on the role of man and I the passive sitter.
References
Berger J (1972) Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation & Penguin Books. London
Judy Dater (2020) Judy Dater Website [Online] Available from: http://judydater.com/ (Accessed 12/01/20)
Smith Anderson North Gallery (2020) Judy Dater Biography [Online] Available From: http://www.smithandersennorth.com/artists/dater/bio.html (Accessed 19/01/20)
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