PHOTOGABBLE // BLOG POST

Gold Shoes.

October 25th, 2008

Initially this was going to be a short article on how content is syndicated to such an extent on the Internet that you can come across the same image or article copied multiple times within one days worth of browsing. Especially if you look on weheartit.com which is regularly assaulted with pornographic photos, tumblr which is the mother of all noisy, feedback, blog collectives and websites such a ffffound.

The above un-titled photo by the photographer Michal Podobycko can be found on one of the obvious sources of the aforementioned blog noise: 2photo.ru. I have for simplicity purposes titled it here as Gold Shoes as it is a very good example of how very simple wardrobe choices can make a selection of very good photos with out much change. Within the above photo the shoes, normally just an accessory to an outfit become an outfit in their own right much in the same way as correct use of technique within long sock photos make the socks more than what they are. Within photos such as these the power of male gaze is very important and should be accounted for, this is an element of such photos I have until now largely ignored as it is too easy to white wash a photo by saying its only beautiful to men, a statement which can quite often be false. The male gaze can be seen within the photo above because the photo is predominantly attractive to men. However objectifying the female form through the use of golden shoes does not mean that females wont see the beauty within the image, beauty that the photographer has attempted to the best of his abilities to capture within the constrains of film.

Those with an overly masculine mentality would be likely to stereotype this view by stating the image of the female form wearing the golden shoes is beautiful to men because its a female form and females just think: “ooh, those are pretty shoes.” This is a way of thinking that still stands to some extent today embodied within the heated subject of sexism, so lets not poke that bee-hive today. In any case this simplistic view is largely wrong because it jumps to the conclusion that females cant understand female beauty, which is obviously incorrect if you have seen any woman’s magazines lately.

Back to the subject in hand: the Golden Shoes and my theory that photography can make an every day normal object special when placed within the male gaze. I have explained this a little within my sexy long sock posts, however it is only recently that the theory has taken form. Within the above photo Golden Shoes the shoes themselves have become more than what they are because they have been placed within the context of the female form falling within the male gaze, the same process that I believe is behind fetishism.

In the second photo above by the same photographer the context within which the Golden Shoes is placed has changed, the scene is still the same, the legs are from the same female form but the camera has stepped back to let more into the frame. The question here is where is the focal point of the frame? This time it is not the shoes themselves, they are just playing their part within the frame, the focus here is the orange/gold puffy skirt that the female form is wearing. With that said it is true that the eyes are led down the legs and towards the shoes which questions if they are the true focal point of this photograph. If they are then it would prove true that the shoes themselves have become something more than just an accessory, much in the same way that stockings have become fetishized within most parts of the world.

It has to be taken for granted that nothing within a photograph is by accident, every detail right down to the shoes have been picked out to provide meaning within the frame and it is up to us the audience to understand that meaning in their own way. Quite often the message the author is transmitting within their work is wildly different to that which the audience receive due to to the arbitrary use of signs and symbols within human language and culture. This means that while what I have said above is true to me, although I admit it is most definitely not polished; a hundred different people will have a hundred different ideas each slightly different to the other. Thus, to wrap this short article up: this could be a contributing factor to why there is so much feedback noise on the Internet as everyone feels the need to include their own view into the debate. This is not a bad thing either, another word for it could be progress as eventually the dominant idea will filter through to popular culture and become part of the arbitrary signifiers and identifiers of every day life, much in the same way that men see female form in stockings and think “sexy”.

Finally I have included another photo by the same artist mentioned above, this time the change in context is more than just a repositioning of the frame. I leave it to you to answer wether the same theory applies to this frame as the one I applied to the previous two photos.

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Tags: gold shoes, Photography, russia