Woman Takes Self-Portraits Of The Strange Looks She Receives In Public

[BainsBane]

108. I know you didn't say there was just one interpretation

And I certainly did read what you wrote. You wrote "YMMV," and I essentially agreed with that and gave you my interpretation. As I said, the responses in this thread struck me as fascinating and can be considered part of her work in capturing the public gaze. What I was doing was reading the responses like someone might read a literary text. You commented that people were responding not to the artist but to "the presence of a stationary person in an area of heavy foot traffic." You explicitly say people are looking at someone out of the frame of the image rather than the woman herself. Many others have made the same observation. My interpretation that you excerpt above is based directly on such responses. I'm not "blaming you" for anything. There is no blame to be had, and there is nothing wrong about your response. Because this artist's work involves the notion of a public gaze, your reaction is part of what this work elicits. I was simply critiquing the responses through a cultural studies lens. I don't expect you to explain or defend either my or your own assumptions.

All photos are cherry picked. I find it interesting to probe assumptions. If we were looking at nature photos no one would ask how many shots did it take to get the perfect photo of a bird or a flower. Photographers always take many more shots that they use. That, I expect, is as true for photographers in our weekly photo contests here as the artist featured in this OP.