“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. […] And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. […] Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. […] The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”

— John Berger, Ways of seeing.

Children visiting museums almost always look ridiculous. What takeaway can a child possibly get out of La grande odalisque* painted by Ingres? How can a young and visually illiterate girl fully appreciate such equilibrate beauty? Well, let me tell you what a twelve years old immediately notices by staring into the odalisque’s painted eyes, notwithstanding her lack of academic formation: the woman’s awareness of being painted as an object for the pleasure of the painter’s gaze. Such childish gaze does not benefit from the accurate depiction of bodily proportions, nor from the luscious draperies surrounding her body. Rather, such childish gaze unconsciously registers a message: the human before her eyes has been deemed as worthy to be depicted because it accepted to lend itself to the the definition of female body to be seen, rather than being valid for its own sake. And such perception is reflected in almost every European representation of femininity between the Renaissance and the beginning of our century.

Such depiction of the odalisque – which come to represent the past perception of female to the eyes of a contemporary spectator – confirms the authority of a male perspective (the painter’s) rather than conveying the talent and passion of the portrayed human. How come we still ponder over the role of visual arts to educate future generations? How come we still debate over the centrality of composition over the emotional charge of a work of art? One might argue that photography is a visual language, and as such it requires perfectly constructed visual structures in order to successfully communicate. True. However, composition has come to play that same role the alphabet plays in a novel: the writer is expected to be able to masterfully employ it towards the end of conveying a message. It’s a basic requirement. It’s a tool, and as such it cannot be an end.

© Alexandra Von Fuerst. Girls are made of scorpions, The warrior (2020). — © Alexandra Von Fuerst. *Girls are made of scorpions, The warrior* (2020).

How do we define what is acceptable and what is not concerning our social interactions? And how do we discern traditionally accepted behaviours from those that are not? We turn to past testimonies of what is perceived as historically established (our respect for the elderly, for instance, stems from our perception that their cultural value has always been preserved), we turn to representations of the principles standing behind our culture (both visual and literary) in an unconscious quest for confirmation regarding our social role as humans and as conscious creators. Basically, we rely on subjective impressions to build our own subjective impression.

© Zanele Muholi. Bester I, Mayotte (2015). — © Zanele Muholi. *Bester I, Mayotte* (2015).

Precisely for this reason the above mentioned twelve years old female visiting the Louvre museum could not help identifying with the definition of woman before her eyes. Precisely for this reason we need more and more examples of femininity studied as an intrinsic quality of humanity rather than a sight offered to a privileged observer. Photography, being the media that by nature reflects the restlessness of our times and our need for immediacy, has acquired the role of subverting such perception that women exist first as sights, and only then as humans.

© Aida Muluneh. The 99 series, Part three (2013).

And the process has just begun. How? By allowing the females’ gaze to finally find a voice that is as authoritative as the one of the male surveyor in themselves. By allowing the females’ to explore their dualities on the one hand, and gain back their unity at the same time.