Connecting Essay: Physical Experiment: Gender: Matthieu Bourel

Connecting Essay -

Physical Experiment/ Gender -

Matthieu Bourel Artwork:
 

My Photographs:
 

Of the images depicted above the first is by the artist Matthieu Bourel whilst the second and third are my own photographs that have been physically manipulated post-production.

Some technical similarities between the final outcomes is that all have been edited in a way that is either physically edited or appears to be and all exist within the medium of portrait photography . Mathieu Bourel is an artist rather than a photographer and thus is able to use pre-existing photographs rather than take his own. Bourel is inspired by vintage and retro works and both metaphorically and physically goes beneath the skin of subjects to understand ideas about identity. One of the most significant features of someone's identity and identity dysphoria is their gender and therefore I thought that Bourel's work could be reproduced in a way that depicts gender stereotypes and expectations of them in society.

Furthermore, the composition of the images are similar in that all feature portraiture developed through the idea of either removing or enhancing the visual and invisible aspects of someone's identity such as what is beneath a gendered exterior. Additionally, the final outcomes subtly portray ideas of negative space within portraiture and how it can be used as a technique to emphasise the positive space and pragmatic meaning of the work.

However, there are also quite a few differences in the final outcomes as shown above. One significant difference being the techniques used to create the images. For example, Bourel as an artist creates multi-media collage images composed of vintage photographs and digital clippings from books, magazines and so on. I, on the other hand, as a photographer employed my own photographs and my separate implicit ideas that I wanted hidden beneath the skin of the subjects. Bourel layered images digitally as a graphic artist whilst I used the simple medium of physical cutting and gluing. Bourel works on physical identity through an anatomical dissection idea whilst I wanted to cut open the mind of someone who has been influenced by society's gendered roles and expectation and depicted these through clippings in the brain region.

The images, as depicted above, explore similar ideas of identity through portraiture in the form of negative space which works in cohesion with the borrowed clippings to develop gender stereotypes within the 'brain' of the portrait subjects. Bourel often focused on the physical central identity components that form the facial region including eyes and mouth; despite this, I decided that the formation of someone's identity is not through their physical appearance but instead through the contents of their brain and thus focused on the social elements of identity. My idea is that sex, male and female, is biological whilst gender, masculinity and femininity, is a social construct formed in the minds of each individual due to societies influence in their primary and secondary socialisation. This supports ideas about genders other than male and female such as: agender, non-binary, gender-fluid and so on.

If I was to improve the pastiche of my final outcome then I would experiment with Photoshop to include techniques such as filters and selective colourisation to reflect the nostalgia of Bourel's sepia/ black and white work, and possibly study gender representation throughout multiple eras, whilst still using my own photographs. I could also experiment with the composition such as cutting the edges in a more fluid pattern rather than a harsh line.  

In conclusion, there are both similarities ands differences between Matthieu Bourel's work and my own in that as I had come across his work years ago it has subconsciously and now more deliberately influenced my ideas about how to interpret identity and more specifically gender identity yet I still have formed my own ideas.