My final images

These are the photographs that I have taken for my 'Feminism in Fairy tales' project.

This series of images consists of a 'start', 'middle' and an 'end'.

'Start' consists of two images introducing the Barbie's and their roles.

'Middle' shows the conflict between characters and shows the dominance of the female character.

'End' contains two images basically showing the 'victory' stages of the battles. In these images the female shows a lot of pride.

In order to determine which images I was going to use, I used the process of elimination. I took the images which were most uncluttered (visually) and which images looked more 'fairytale' and which would flow better in a series of images.

For this project, I intended on using modern day icons and manipulating their roles expected by society. The icons that I used are Barbie and Action Man. I used Barbie because in society she is perceived as just a pretty face who doesn't do anything other than arrange her wardrobe of pretty pink dresses. I used Action Man because he is a seen as a very tough guy and is an icon to many boys. Taking these two icons, I switched their roles to make Barbie the more dominant one who defeats the "big strong men".

I feel that using dolls instead of actual people works better because you can take the known iconic characters (along with their roles in society) and use them to give your images a deeper meaning which the viewers most probably will understand. If you were to use people, you wouldn't (really) have this in-depth meaning.

I also feel that using my Neutral Density filter (ND filter) worked because it gave me assistance to adjust the lighting when specific parts of the image were too light (even when the aperture was changed).

I also like the use of the sword and shield (that the Barbie was holding) because it makes the photographs look a lot more fairytale-like (which is the look I was going for) because we normally we associate these items with a "Prince Charming" but not in this case.

The only difficulty I had with this project was positioning the dolls (as it is difficult to keep them standing up) but I overcome this problem by using "props" to prop them up.

When experimenting with my props (dolls), I did try to add fake blood (seen in previous post) to the Action Men but I don't feel like the blood looked real enough so I decided to portray defeat in different ways (altering their positioning and poses).

My images relate back to each and every one of my research pieces.

My images relate back to Dina Goldstein's works because my images also take specific characters and twists the expected "fairytale ending". My images relate back to my 'Alpha females' research as my images also portray my female characters as the dominant alpha-female. My images relate back to my 'Controversy' research as I have kept my female characters less feminine, much tougher and slightly tomboy-ish. My images relate back to Rion Sabean's works as my work also portrays specific genders in a reversed representation of that sex. My images relate back to my 'Barbie' research for obvious reasons; I have used Barbie dolls to represent the "alpha-female" characters. My images relate back to Boushra Almutawakel's images because I've also used dolls to get a certain message across.

In relation to my final proposal, I have stuck to it. Reading back through my proposal I realize that I haven't once drifted from what I said I was going to do. The only difference to my proposal is that I have produced 7 images whereas in my proposal I said I was intending on producing 6.

If I had the opportunity to re-shoot these images again, I would experiment with different locations (so that the background would be more interesting and look a lot more atmospheric) and I would also experiment with different costumes for my dolls because the same dress was used for all of the images (which could look a bit boring and not very imaginative/ experimental) and I would use different Action Man dolls to give a bit of a nice change in characters.