"To treat any object , work, or product “as” performance”{..} means to investigate what the object does, how it interacts with other objects or beings, and how it relates, to other objects or beings."
SCHECHNER R., Performance Studies, 2006 (p.30)
V(ULV)amera
-
takes a photo from cunt's- eye-view.
-
eschews telescopic/macro/perspective control lenses.
-
is a combination of pinhole camera and custom housing in a variety of materials.
-
produces only 1 miniature photo of approximately 2cm diameter (developed chemically), per session.
-
designed to be located to the vulval area, far away from the face/eyes of the photographer.
-
doesn't "shoot" but "reflects".
Optical properties
Focal length: 50 mm
Pinhole aperture: 0.30mm
F/stop: 168
ISO: 6
Sunny day exposure: 18-20sec
Cloudy day exposure: 23-25sec
An original, hybrid, vulvophilic,"performative" camera, designed to offer an unconventional experience to both photographer and subject while taking a photo from (my)
cunt's- eye-view:
something that you won't find in the established market.
photo by Daz Disley
PROCESS OF MAKING
V(ULV)amera consists of two parts:
an internal and an external body.
Internal body
A pinhole camera made of recycled material: a container for blood test strips and a needle 0,23 mm, sheets of aluminium from a beer can and reclaimed shutters for old cameras.
To calculate the optical properties, I used the
External body
A cast of my Vulva, in a variety of materials created through a multi-stage process casting from negative to positive and back again- from alginate and plaster through to latex and silicone to finally outputs positive casts of my cunt in resin, rubber and plaster, compete with aperture fitting for the internal body.
Camera as Phallic symbol
"The intricately fashioned, glittering tubes and shining lenses hold for them something of the appeal that jewellery does for women."
Carl Fulton Sulzberger ,"Unconscious Motivations of the Amateur Photographer", 1955.
The camera as phallus is, at most, a flimsy variant of the inescapable metaphor that everyone unselfconsciously employs. However hazy our awareness of this fantasy, it is named without subtlety whenever we talk about "loading" and "aiming" a camera, about "shooting" a film... Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy-machines whose use is addictive... Still, there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture."
Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977 (p. 13-15)
“If one observes the movements of a human being in possession of a camera (or of a camera in possession of a human being), the impression given is of someone lying in wait. This is the ancient act of stalking which goes back to the palaeolithic hunter in the tundra. Yet photographers are not pursuing their game in the open savannah but in the jungle of cultural objects, and their tracks can be traced through this artificial forest."
”Vilem Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography,1983 (p.33)
* The video can be played simultaneously.
The photographic camera can be seen as something more than a passive tool in the hands of its operator:
-
a sexual metaphor representing the photographer's phallus with the (telescopic) lens becoming an extension of the "male gaze". The telescopic lens with the ability to zoom penetrates the personal space of the individual while offering to the photographer a voyeuristic and scopophilic view.
-
an apparatus with which the photographer can be seen to hold a position of power and control while staying safe, invisible and unexposed behind it. Like holding a weapon that allows you to choose a target and "shoot" it.
The narrative cinema of Hollywood is discussed thoroughly in the ground- breaking work of Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1999), in which she explains the concept of “male gaze” as a feature of gender power asymmetry in mainstream cinema, which “coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order” (1999, 835). The male gaze takes place when the camera brings the viewer into the perspective of a (heterosexual) man observant of the female body. McCabe concurs with Mulvey that “patriarchy encodes a gender imbalance within ways of seeing” (2004, 29). Within this context, the camera appears to have a “male” agenda through which cinema views, records and represents the world.