Here are the remaining six. See what you think:
Beth Dow
Bill Sullivan
Jeong Mee Yoon
Joni Sternbach
Krista Steinke
Peter van Agtmael
If I could cast my vote for one of the finalists, it would be Jeong Mee Yoon. Her statement about life is intelligent, she reveals something about the reality of being human, and reveals the dark and insidious underbelly of gender-programming and our commodity culture. Here is her process:
"To make "The Pink and Blue Project" images, I visit the child's room, where I display and rearrange his/her colored accessories. I ask my models to pose for me with their pink or blue objects, in an effort to show the viewer the extent to which children and their parents, knowingly or unknowingly, are influenced by advertising and popular culture. I first lay out the larger items, blankets or coats, and then spread smaller articles on top of the clothes. This method references objects that are displayed in a museum collection. In some pictures, the children even look like dolls.
I use a 6x6 format Hasselblad camera because the square format enhances the effect of the many crowded objects on display. My photographs are taken with the smallest aperture, f-22, to get a hyper-realistic depiction of each object and person." (1)
Source for photosI grew up as a tomboy. I liked what boys liked doing and played with boy toys. I always felt like there was a lot of pressure to not be myself. Jeong Mee Yoon's work validates my experience and now I know for sure there is a hell of a lot of pressure on children these days and it is reinforced through commodity culture. Thanks Jeong Mee.
(1) http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/19436/svas-jeongmee-yoon/
1 comment:
It is sickening to me that we so strongly influence a childs gender identity by consumer products. I'm sure the argument from the toy manufacturers is "Girls like pink, and boys like blue", but how true is that really? And do you notice the cartoon characters that are associated with each room? How is a little boy to feel if he really admires Dora the explorer or a little girl to feel if she has an affinity for spiderman? What do we hear parents saying? Most of the time these children will hear "You dont want that, its for girls" or "its for boys". Why? Some parents do a great job in supporting their children and letting them explore their interests as they please, including buyng boys toys for girls or vice versa, but I think a lot of parents have a secret fear that their children wont "turn out right" if they dont stick with the preconcieved notion of gender identity.
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