Not Just a Pretty Face

"To a great extent, advertising tells us who we are and who we should be." Jean Kilbourne.

I have become increasingly worried about the way women are represented in the media. The Tom Ford fragrance advertising campaign is amongst the worst for objectifying women, simply showing a woman's torso or pelvis with the bottle of cologne strategically placed to avoid censorship. The woman has no identity at all: she is merely greased up skin, all recognisable features, or even limbs, have been cut out of the picture. Interestingly, Tom Ford escaped censorship by claiming that "the highly stylised creative treatment gave the ad an artistic quality, not a salacious one" (Nikki Sandison, brandrepublic.com, 19/12/07).

What is more disconcerting is that he may even have a point. Women have been objectified in art throughout art history. As John Berger stated in his ground breaking 1972 series "Ways of Seeing", 'to be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A nude has to be seen as an object in order to be a nude… they are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own."

For this project I have endeavoured to capture the true identity of my female subjects at the same time making a statement about the way women are pressurised to look and act a certain way. "Vanishing Point" is inspired by my time working as artist in residence at a centre for eating disorders.