Picture me : relations of body, image, and subject in collective biography

Marion Brown, Susanne Gannon

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    Abstract

    Feminists have long been interested in the politics of representation, the gaze, and developing emancipatory methodologies that interrogate and subvert dominant discourses that shape the lives of girls and women. We are inundated by images of ourselves that range from those captured in family photo albums to those that circulate on social networking sites. They range from formal portrait photographs, to photographs taken to record specific events such as graduations, to what are popularly called “selfies” – digital shots taken at arm’s length on smartphones. The allure of visual culture and the availability of theoretical tools for unpacking the interconnections between images, bodies, and gender suggest that personal photographs are a productive focus for inquiry into girlhood subjectivities. Our collective biography on sexuality and schooling provided us with the opportunity to self-curated and interrogate our own images of girlhood and the associated narratives we were in the habit of telling ourselves about those images. Following Rebecca Coleman (2008, 2009), in this chapter we examine the becoming of bodies through images, specifically the becoming of particular bodies in particular times and places through the images that we chose from our adolescent image archives. From this perspective, images and bodies can be understood as materially and affectively entangled assemblages. We chose to frame our selections, our narratives of memory, and our investigations of the relations among image, body, and subject through photographs of “a time when you felt good about how you looked.” We turn to the stories we told about these images in the second half of the chapter.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationBecoming Girl: Collective Biography and the Production of Girlhood
    EditorsMarnina Gonick, Susanne Gannon
    Place of PublicationCanada
    PublisherWomen's Press
    Pages159-176
    Number of pages18
    ISBN (Electronic)9780889615151
    ISBN (Print)9780889615137
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

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