Dear Shaded Viewers,
While in Trieste for ITS7 I had a look at the work of the photographer Asa Johannesson. Currently a student at the Royal College of art, her portraits of him /her are a study in the ambiguity of sexuality.
PORTRAITS OF HER
‘Portraits of her’ is a comment on femininity, drawing on the historical role of the photograph as a method of classification. In the nineteenth century photography became a means of defining human faces as classified types. The project is a suggestion of a parallel between the role of the historical and the contemporary photographic portrait. The series aims to challenge classical notions of feminine beauty norms and traditional representations of femininity as portrayed in the photograph. Although stylistically reminiscent of the use of typology as aesthetic, the series comments on and contradicts the notion of the human type. Thus, ‘portraits of her’ encourages a reading of femininity as a fictitious category, suggesting diversity and challenge to the very order of femininity.
PORTRAITS OF HIM
‘Portraits of Him’ is a project commenting on and challenging masculinity as a form of identity. By focusing on men identifying as FTM (female to male), the series aims to use the sitters’ embodiment of masculinity to explore notions of desire, fantasy and dreams. Masculinity thus becomes an allegory and an ideal but simultaneously also a form of loss. ‘Portraits of Him’ attempts to portray a longing, culminating in the desire to become Him.
Later,
Diane
