I wanted to experiment with the idea of masculinity and femininity and and wanted to find out if these two characteristics can be expressed through light. The idea came to me when I had been thinking about old hollywood films, particularly film noir, where lighting was a heavy visual input that separated how the audience recognized the difference between Men and Women. So for this project I wanted to see if this does in fact effect our (the audience) perception of masculine and feminine objects, and through my photographs prove that the way we see how light is displayed does instinctively draw connections between what we see and what we associate it with.
I intended to use various kinds of lighting at first, but then when I went through some artists that helped shape my work I narrowed down my ideas to end up with only a few types of lighting that seemed to reoccur throughout most of my precedent's works, which showed that femininity involved brighter lit atmospheres while masculinity involved more shadows and contrast. For this project I ended up using a lot of down lighting to achieve this contrast and then ambient lighting using a white umbrella-like tool to soften the sharpness of direct light. I initially wanted to use abstract angles and points of views, but then I thought that it may confuse the audience too much, and since I want the audience to easily comprehend the photographs I think i should make it slightly straightforward so that it doesn't end up looking too basic or too abstract.
I decided to use this idea because it interested me how femininity and masculinity can be visually recognized and communicated through particular conventions or typical features that allows individuals to categorize whether something is masculine or feminine. Im not aiming to target a specific audience, but allow the viewers to think about how things around us are designed specifically to attract a group or market audience and how gender helps the object become more attractive for the two different groups. this would then ingage the viewers and allow them to think about gender in depth and why manufacturers and designers focus so much on making gender-specific items and how they achieve this.
for my final output I intend to use 4-6 of my strongest pictures that communicate my ideas and appear artistic and thoughtful enough to grab the audience's attention. I want the main focus of the collection to be about light and how different kinds of light depict masculinity and femininity, so when the audience see my photographs I intend on the light source to be the first thing to stand out, before they decipher what is n the rest of the photo.
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