Social skin : initiation through the bodily transformation of four South African women : an exploration using documentary photography
Master Thesis
2002
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
My work questions social and cultural constructs of 'normality' and, by focusing on the practices of marginalised communities, questions dominant cultural conventions of female identity, beauty and sexuality. Within visual media, if the private or unsaid of female experience is said, it is seen as subversive. By focusing on four female initiations, my intention is to develop a specific yet complex comparison of different types of initiations. Embedded within the communities I have photographed are unique perceptions of beauty, each of which differs from mainstream notions. My intention is not to exoticise any particular community, but to explore some sub-cultures of female youth in South Africa, and to unfold how these women position themselves in post-Apartheid South Africa. An important component of the work is the relationship of the subject to the documentary process. I hope both to raise questions and also provide some answers concerning how the means of signification functions for the subjects. As the photographer of their transformation process, I am positioned as an outsider in their lives. As a means of acknowledging this, I include a series of photographs taken or directed by the women themselves, alongside my own. In doing so, my intention is to create a visual dialogue with the subjects, effectively offering them the opportunity to reply to my images with their own. This is not meant as a patronising gesture of political correctness, but as a means of attaining a more complete narrative while at the same time exploring complexities inherent in the play between 'inside' and 'outside' perspectives. My editing of their self-portraits positions me as a curator in this facet of the project.
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Bibliography: p. 92-93.
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Turok, K. 2002. Social skin : initiation through the bodily transformation of four South African women : an exploration using documentary photography. University of Cape Town.