The Brotherhood

by helen608

Our golden band is her cage, her duties and expectations form the bars. She is a wife and a mother: a thing of beauty, a creature of obedience. We have tamed and trapped her and thus she is ours. We goad her with raspberries, a healthy pregnancy.

The Virgin is the highest type of female excellence. We give her white garments, ensuring she upholds their purity. We thrust lilies at her, chaining her to chastity. We press cherries hard into her delicate hands, modest beauty, immaculate.

This girl who buds must be torn into flowering. We loose her clothes, we wet her lips. We give her pomegranate, their seeds tell of her blossoming fertility. She is our maiden ready for marriage, ready for us.

For she who is fallen must be forced to rise. We give her blackberries, sorrow, spiritual neglect.  We wait for her atonement. We throw our rosary beads at her, our prayers and good faith. We hold her down at the water, coerce her into the inevitable cleansing.

The Damsel in Distress

by helen608

For the damsel in distress shoot I used pink flowers which symbolise gratitude and blueberries which symbolise protection. Again I was working with the idea of hiding her face so any individuality is lost and all that remains is the role prescribed to her. Unfortunately I am not happy with the results of this and will have to reshoot. I wanted to tangle the models hair up in the brambles and gorse bushes to represent the notion of her existing in entrapment, waiting for her heroic knight to rescue hair. However the hair was very soft and thin and not right for what I was trying to do with it. The female needs to appear helpless, unable to do anything about her predicament which is in actuality very easy to get out of. I was also experimenting with squashing the blueberries again keeping with the idea that this shows some motion on the females part of freeing herself from her role within the image. I will be trying the shoot again with a model with thicker hair and hopefully will achieve the images that I want.

Wife, Mother, Caged Bird

by helen608

   

Here I have retried my very first shoot for this project when I was attempting to draw relations between the the woman as a wife and mother and the idea of this role being similar to a caged bird. After the first shoot I was dissatisfied with the photos as I found them flat and boring, I much prefer the ones in this series. In most of the images I ensured the woman’s face is hidden from view so that she is represented not by any defining personal features but by her hair and the surroundings. In Pre Raphaelite paintings hair worn loose is a sign of female sexuality, I have used this element here rather then having the models hair tied up in tight, repressed bun to create an idea that she is destroying from within this role under which she has been placed. This is the same with the squashing of the raspberries, I have heard that they can be symbolic of a healthy pregnancy, I have shown them held in hands that are encaged both by the metal bars and their shadows emphasising the lack of choice a Victorian wife had of being a mother. There is also ivy present in some of the images – ivy symbolisies eternity.

 

Nubile Maiden

by helen608

 

The Nubile Maiden is young, with a budding sexual desire and is newly marriageable. Her youthful purity is lusted after. I have presented her in an overtly sexual way, which is emphasised by her beauty and sharp red hair. The pomegranate symbolises fertility and the blossom tree in the background represents awakening passion. The seeds of the fruit have been burst in her hand, her skin is stained and the almost purple tint it leaves seems painful and unnatural, the juice runs its tendrils down her body ensnaring her under its colour and symbolic nature. It is as though the fruit is the main element here, controlling the way in which the girl is depicted.

The Holy Virgin

by helen608

 

This is an depiction of the female as a Holy Virgin. The white flowers and lilies show purity and the cherries represent modest beauty. The figure is seen squeezing the cherries so their red flesh clings to the petals, their juice has ran down her arm dirtying her clothes. Again, I want all the symbolism to be trapping the woman within her role. The motion of destroying the cherries and purposefully besmirching the white within the image depicts a desire to break out from her designated state as The Holy Virgin.

Location Lighting

by helen608

The Fallen Magdalene

by helen608

In this shoot I was exploring the idea of the female as a fallen woman seeking penance for her sinful life. Blackberries symbolise sorrow and spiritual neglect, while the dark, cloudy water represents impure sexuality and also the idea of cleansing the soul. I have been experimenting with different ways of muting the tones of the photos and bringing out certain colours. I wanted there to be so many layers of symbolism that the identity of the woman is lost within it, she appears through her hair that is representative of her femininity. The juice from the blackberry stains her skin, marking her for what she is.

Some Rough Experimentation Images

by helen608

With these images I was trying to take a different approach to my project. I layered various elements of photos containing symbolism relating to the subject of each image (Woman as bird – tree, nesting, home, bird cage, sky seen through net curtain). It’s been done quite roughly so the images aren’t perfect but already I prefer this method than the photos I took at the start of the project.

Second Shoot

by helen608

For this photo shoot I was trying to capture the idea of the woman as a ‘Holy Virgin’. The white outfit symbolised purity, the veil modesty, the hands folded near the womb are protective while the Christ like position of head raised and arms extended away from the body express a serene reverence. The purple flower, in accordance with Pre Raphaelite symbolism serves as a warning of sorts,  drawing relations to a scene often depicted by the artists – The Immaculate Conception, when the angel  Gabriel appeared to Mary to inform her she was to to be the mother of Jesus.

As with the last shoot I am not too happy with the images, they seem very flat and straightforward, and I am not excited by them. I want to experiment with perhaps physically manipulating them to see if I can create something with a bit more life.

First Shoot – Woman as a Bird

by helen608

 

 

The inspiration for this shoot came from the symbolism in Pre Raphaelite paintings that drew relations between women and caged birds. The symbolism was suggesting that when a woman marries, her role as wife and mother become so much her life that that is all she exists as – her female spirit is trapped within the confines of this role. I used cages and feathered jewelry in this shoot to emphasise this notion of  the female as a bird. The outfit is a modernised take on pre Raphaelite style costume.