Et Dieu Créa la Femme @ Good Press

The black and white partial view of Venus that opens Et Dieu Crea La Femme, edited by Tine Bek,embodies the elusive and diverse nature of femininity that the journal studies.

A blasé image of coital flies accompanies the opening text on shrillness, femaleness and aggression. In the image the female is held down; the male’s legs over her head. Passivity and the virginal image are also expressed in Susan Boyle’s image of the faceless sculpture of the Madonna, all in white and unable to emote. Countering this, Paula Nimand Duvå’s seductively offered peach has all the associations of forbidden fruit and the temptation that women embody.

Eye contact is particularly crucial in Jasmine Bakalarz’s shots of adolescent dancers. With black high-thighed leotards and pulled-back hair, their gaze is nevertheless direct, accusatory and aggressive. Then turning from the camera, blemishes on a woman’s back have been gridded off in blue pen, while the young girl in the image opposite wears a pink tight tiger stripes and stares indifferently into the camera with a sardonic confidence.

Emphasis is also on changing perception of women’s form and figure. In the legs photographed by Alexandra Giarraputo Pym, there is the expected smooth, slim elegance, with almost hyperbolic Grecian beauty. Contrastingly, Nina Bacos’ interior scenes and images of spread legs substitute idealism for comfortable intimacy and physicality.

Sarah Michelle Riisager’s domesticated bird in a clenched fist raises ideas of confinement with beauty. There’s an ambiguous juxtaposition of objectifications of female strength and beauty in Bek’s notably gynomorphic tree, set aside flowers in bloom.

Dedicated to Brigitte Bardot’s performance in the 1958 film of the same name, the heightened sensuality and intensity of the journal’s photographs have embodied the work they cite, and collectively they create a sophisticated and empowered exemplification of contemporary muliebrity.