Camera Eye

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There is a comment to this post about the pretensions of intellectuals versus the actual intentions of artists, in this case a photographer, that brings up a side issue: do men and women photograph different things? Anyway, here is the quote:

Give a boy a camera and he’ll shoot photos of girls. Give a girl a camera, and she’ll shoot photos of herself.

Well, that’s that whole “Venus’ mirror” thing, and maybe it’s true of most women. (By the way, the photographer that is the subject of the post took photos of herself in various retro-sexy poses — which aren’t bad at all, I like the “domesticated sex kitten” and the “ice-cold sophisticate” best; you’d think I’d prefer the librarian, but I don’t, maybe it’s because she’s blond and I prefer brunettes — like me!) But I’ve known women photographers and none of them seemed to be particularly into themselves — a friend I had in Miami preferred to take pictures of rock musicians at concerts, her cats, and annoyingly — as I hate to have my picture taken — me. She did a few self-portraits but was never happy with them, as far as I can recall. I did know women who liked to have their picture taken, but I wasn’t one of them. My own amateur efforts have been mainly focused on nature — trees and so on — my cats, city streetscapes — things like that. In fact, I tend to avoid taking pictures of people whenever possible. If they are strangers I can’t help feeling it’s kind of rude, for one thing. As for me taking pictures of myself, I’ve no serious interest in it, and as I said, I hate having pictures of myself taken. It’s not that I think I’m ugly, I just have no interest in posing and preening and standing still, etc. Of course, when I get around to renewing my passport I guess I’ll just have to bite the bullet.

(Via Violins and Starships.)

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