The Ecofeminist Lens:
Nature, Technology & the Female Body in Lens-based Art
Nikki Zoë Omes S2103605
Master’s Thesis
Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
MA Media Studies, Film & Photographic Studies Supervisor: Helen Westgeest
Second Reader: Eliza Steinbock 14 August 2019
21,213 words
Contact: nikkiomes@live.nl
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Chapter 1: Photographic Transitions in Representing the Human-Nature Relation 10
1.1. From Documentary to Conceptual: Ana Mendieta’s Land Art 11
1.2. From Painterly to Photographic: The Female Nude in Nature 17
Chapter 2: The Expanding Moving Image of the Female Body in Nature 27
2.1. From Outside to Inside: Ana Mendieta’s Films in the Museum 28
2.2. From Temporal to Spatial: Pipilotti Rist’s Pixel Forest as Media Ecology 35
Chapter 3: An Affective Turn Towards the Non-human/Female Body 42
3.1. From Passive Spectator to Active Material: The Female Corporeal Experience 43
3.2. From Iconic to Immanent: The Goddess in Movement 49
Conclusion 59
Works Cited 61
Introduction
I decided that for the images to have magic qualities I had to work directly with nature. I had to go to the source of life, to mother earth (Mendieta 70).
Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) was a multimedia artist whose oeuvre sparked my interest into
researching the intersection between lens-based art and ecofeminism. Mendieta called her 1
interventions with the land “earth-body works,” which defy categorization and instead live on within several discourses such as performance art, conceptual art, photography and film .
While her photography practice allowed her to work “outside the museum walls and beyond
category and convention” (Walker 24), Mendieta’s process was like a sculptor working with
the land as her clay (Cecilia). As an artist who worked directly with nature and was active during the brink of the ecofeminist movement, many scholars associate her work with ecofeminism and goddess feminism. But what is ecofeminism?2
Francoise d’Eaubonne was the first to use the term “ecofeminism,” an abbreviation
for ecological feminism, in 1974. As the word suggests, the movement brings together
feminist and ecological concerns and sees a connection between the domination of nature
and the subordination of women. Being an activist, Eaubonne believed not only that the
liberation of women was tied to the liberation of nature, but also that ecofeminism should be
“anti-theory, anti-science, [and] anti-rational” (qtd. in Glazebrook 20) (Gersdorf 213).
However, the responsibility to challenge and critique the prevailing patriarchal traditions
also lies in academia. One of the first and most influential ecofeminist literary critics, Patrick Murphy stated that, “any ethically based criticism [...] is a type of intervention, and therefore can function as a form of activism and certainly a method of encouraging others to become activists” (qtd. in Claaren et al. 106). Moreover, the systems of domination that ecofeminism seeks to expose continue to be perpetuated and justified not only in politics and the media, 1 Mendieta’s work is often analyzed with regard to her biography, having immigrated from Cuba to the United States of America as a child without her parents. Her tragic and controversial death at the age of 36 - some believe she was murdered by her then-husband and famous sculptor Carl Andre - often overshadows the thematic and art historical significance of her work. For this reason, I solely focus on Mendieta’s art (practices) in this thesis.
2 Goddess feminism is a movement closely tied to ecofeminism that bases spirituality in female divinities. The significance of goddess symbolism in lens-based art will be elaborated upon in sections 1.2 and 3.2 of this thesis.
“but also less obvious [places], like the academy, intellectual community, avant-garde artistic practices and radical theories - especially in feminism” (de Lauretis 3).3
Thus, ecofeminism penetrated the academic sphere, where theorists sought to
challenge the permeating male perspective in environmental disciplines. Deep ecology, for
instance, is a branch of environmental philosophy that addresses the interconnectedness of humans and nature. Ecofeminism seconds this notion, but adds that patriarchy and capitalism - not only in Western culture - are to blame for the anthropocentrism that dominates society. Instead of ignoring difference, ecofeminists address the multiplicity of4
perspectives towards the environment (Selam 81). As Irene Diamond and Feman Orenstein
write in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (1990), life should be
considered as, “lived awareness that we experience in relation to particular beings as well as the larger whole” (137). Although the domination of nature and women are central concerns,
ecofeminism is an intersectional branch of feminism that considers interconnections
between all systems of domination. Karen J. Warren, in Ecological Feminism (1994), calls these the “isms of domination” (2), amongst which are sexism, racism, classism,
hetereosexism, and ethnocentrism. 5
This thesis, however, will focus on the core of ecofeminism, exploring how the value
dualism between nature and humans is conceptually tied to the value dualism between man
and woman. Art theorist Suzann Boettger outlines this connection as forth:
Traditional archetypes of “woman” associate her with “nature” conceived of as
capricious and irrational . . . in contrast to the identification of masculine qualities with things “manmade”: aspects of culture that are reasoned, or socially mediated.
The latter have been valued more highly because they are constructed intentionally
and are further removed from primal nature (253).
3 Feminist scholar Teresa de Lauretis was referring to the continuous social construction of gender in this sentence, but her argument can also be applied to other culturally ingrained notions and hierarchies that remain invisible in many fields.
4 Val Plumwood was a key player in ecofeminism but also in the development of “ecosophy,” meaning the philosophy of ecological harmony, which was first conceptualized in the nineties by post-structuralist Félix Guattari and deep ecologist Arne Næss. Her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) is a
philosophical account of ecofeminism and its relation to other feminist and ecologist theories.
5 María Mies & Vandana Shiva reflect upon the more political rather than strictly philosophical side of ecofeminism and how these “isms of domination” function in real situations, reflecting upon interviews with
Warren calls these differences between what is considered “masculine” and “feminine” in
Western culture as value dualisms - human/nature, man/woman, mind/body, reason/emotion
- that function to keep the systems of domination intact (2). Art is then also traditionally 6 considered as something “manmade,” where men create order out of the chaos of the earth
or their female model/muse. Warren suggests that, “a less colonizing approach to nature7
does not involve denying human reason or human difference but rather ceasing to treat
reason as the basis of superiority and domination” (68).
The discipline of ecofeminism faced critique for its sometimes essentialist view of the
woman-nature relation - believing there is some essential connection between women and
nature that men do not have - and universal generalizations of femininity and female
experience. (Post-)structuralist feminists wanted to instead liberate women from the
connection to nature, since it distanced them more from the cultural and scientific realm
dominated by men. Feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir for example, thought women
needed to become autonomous subjects free from the associations of nature. Yet, in the same
text, The Second Sex (1952), Beauvoir contends that both women and nature are seen as
‘other’ in the patriarchal order (114). The fact that this was written in the fifties suggest that there was already a need for deeper ecofeminist analysis within earlier feminist discourse.
Although the aim of ecofeminism was to research why cultural dualisms exist and how they
function, its dismissal in the 1990s led to an outright rejection of the term ‘ecofeminism’ by most scholars entering the 2000s.
Currently, however, ecofeminism is experiencing somewhat of a resurgence. In
“Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-placing Species in a Material
Feminist Environmentalism” (2011), Greta Gaard pleads for a “new ecofeminism” (44) that
embraces its history but is simultaneously critical of its earlier pitfalls. Even though the 8
scepticism about ecofeminism persists, the field continues to expand, being linked to
6 Ecofeminism has been critiqued as generalizing that the woman-nature relation is a global phenomenon, since many Eastern cultures have a very different cultural conception of women and nature. It is therefore necessary to specify that these modes of thinking are specific to Western culture.
7 For example, the earth is “ordered” by landscape painters romanticising its wilderness and figurative painters for instance historically censor and conceal women’s bodies.
8 This “new ecofeminism” takes the form of a “critical ecofeminism,” “anthropocene ecofeminism” and “posthumanist anticolonial ecofeminism” in Gaard’s 2017 book.
different disciplines such as queer theory and materialism. The editor’s introduction by 9
Margarita Estévez-Saá and María Jésus Lorenzo-Modia, published in Women’s Studies in
2018, outlines the contemporary debates on ecofeminism(s) and argues for a merging of
ethics and aesthetics in order to encourage perspectives of ‘eco-caring’ (21). Estévez-Saá and Lorenzo-Modia discuss and include other essays on ecofeminist literature in the journal in an effort to “enhance the application of ecofeminist ethics to the realm of aesthetics” (140).
Ecocriticism, a term introduced in 1978, is synonymous with ecofeminism and is often used to analyze novels and poetry (Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia 132). More recent ecocritical analysis, however, has been based on film. What literature and cinema have in 10
common is that they are primarily narrative-based, and thus make for more obviously
applicable formats to analyze through an ethical lens. The analyses are often solely focused on aspects of narrative and characterization, instead of the formalist or aesthetic choices by
the author or director. But these choices prove crucial, considering the poststructuralist
notion of the non-transparent, biased, and inevitably subjective nature of words and images (Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia 15). Amanda Boetzkes shows in The Ethics of Earth Art
(2010) that ecocriticism can delve into the visual practices of art whilst simultaneously
considering ecological ethics. Boetzkes’ case studies are what she calls “contemporary earth11 art,” which are works of art from any media that contemplate nature and/or the relationship between humans and nature (3).
Although a handful of artists were specifically associated with ecofeminism in the
seventies, the label has remained “eco-art,” “environmental art,” or Boetzkes’ “earth art”
instead of “ecofeminist art”. In 1996, the Women Eco Artists Dialogue (WEAD) was created
as a response to the growing attention to female artists working with the environment.
Although the WEAD includes artists working with “electronic media” in their database,
scholars tend to associate media like landscape art and sculpture with ecofeminism. In 2003, 9 Lee & Dow’s “Queering Ecological Feminism: Erotophobia, Commodification, Art, and Lesbian Identity” (2001) and Mellor’s “Feminism and Enviromental Ethics: A Material Perspective” (2000) are examples of this expansion of ecofeminism.
10 Monani & Cubitt’s Ecocinema Theory and Practice (2012) and Marchessault, Cubitt & Malina’s Ecstatic
Worlds: Media, Utopias, Ecologies (2017) for example.
Gloria Feman Orenstein categorized “ecofeminist artists of the new millennium,” as “artists [who] tend to focus on healing the damage through direct, hands-on, aesthetic and scientific collaborations with the earth herself” (104). “The Artistic Progressions of Ecofeminism: The Changing Focus of Women in Environmental Art” (2011) by Jade Wildly charts two different
kinds of ecofeminist art practices, where “Cultural Ecofeminism incorporates symbology,
drawing on religious and mythical iconography, while Social Ecofeminism incorporates
environmental activism and action (55). Wildy concludes that from approximately the 1990s
onwards, women in environmental art moved away from the cultural feminist notions of
“earth-mother symbolism” (64) towards more social ecofeminist interventions.
However, I find that cultural ecofeminism is in the midst of a reformation, where contemporary female artists are avidly exploring the relation between women and nature
through symbolism and philosophy. To name some examples of artists working with
lens-based media: Melanie Bonajo explores the changing relationship between humans,
nature and spirituality (figure 1.1), Sheba Chhachhi examines the politics of nature’s
destruction and how women are affected by it (fig. 1.2), and Shana Moulton expresses
contemporary ecological anxiety through her filmic alter-ego Cynthia (fig. 1.3). I will be
discussing similar art in this thesis, where the connection to ecofeminism may not be
intentional by the artist, but communicates shared ideas and imagery to that of ecofeminism. My main objective is to uncover the role of lens-based media in artistic expressions of ecofeminist philosophy and therefore develop a gender-aware ecocriticism of lens-based art. I will call this “the ecofeminist lens,” which I will apply to my analysis of lens-based art. Since it would be reductive to claim that artworks can only be perceived as ecofeminist, I emphasize that these are ecofeminist readings of artworks, which could thus also be read in other ways. The aim of producing an ecofeminist lens is therefore not to state that these artworks are inherently ecofeminist, but to explore how an ecofeminist philosophy can be
identified and how this is expressed, visualised and enhanced through the choice of
lens-based media.
The umbrella term “lens-based media” includes film, animation, photography, and video - in short, art forms that revolve around the lens for their making. Since lens-based art
is highly dependent on modern technologies, this focus provides chances to reflect upon the
tension between technology and nature. Although it may seem as though ecofeminists would
like to return to a ‘natural’ life before technology, many do not oppose technology but think it should be put towards more positive uses that do not harm the environment (Selam 82).
Jane Wildly describes the position of ecofeminism within the era of the Anthropocene : 12
While there are varying degrees of opinion within Ecofeminism, the close link
between humanity and nature is a common thread. It is considered that with the
advent of scientific and technological developments, the human race has become
separated from nature. This divorce from nature, as a core element of the human
condition, has resulted in what can be described as soullessness and emptiness, a lost
connection rendering the extensions of the spirit, life, creativity and emotion
meaningless and dead. While this is significant for all humanity, ecofeminists
consider it more poignant for women, critiquing the patriarchal view of the
environment (55).
It is precisely this “lost connection” to nature that artists attempt to revive in audiences by injecting new meaning into themes of “the spirit, life, creativity and emotion” that are so
intertwined with our experience of and within nature. So what role can lens-based media
play in reviving the connection between humans and nature? And how is the relationship
between the female body and nature expressed using lens-based art?
To answer these questions, I will discuss three main topics that are already
established within media studies - photographic representation (chapter 1), the moving
image in the museum (chapter 2) and the affective turn (chapter 3). I have chosen these topics on the basis of their conceptual connection to ecofeminism. Each chapter is dedicated to one of these themes and proposes two transitions or changes in perspective that occurred in relation to this theme. This structure allows for the arguments to be based upon aesthetic and thematic transitions, using lens-based art by female artists as supportive case studies. It also traces the growing possibilities of visual expression using lens-based media - from being limited to the rectangular frame in photography and film (sections 1.1-2.1) to the potential of
multi-channel, multimedia and web-based manifestations of the moving image (sections 2.2-3.2).
This thesis will focus on exploring how the choice of a lens-based medium affects the
expression of ecofeminist notions and not the other way around. For this reason, the
chapters and sections revolve around concepts in media studies and not ecofeminism. Some
theories that will be central to this thesis are Susan Sontag & Roland Barthes’ notions of
trace and time in photography; George Baker’s formation of the expanded field of
photography; Walter Benjamin’s different conceptions of aura in photography and film;
Thomas Elsaesser’s idea of “ecological time” in the moving image; and Pepita Hesselberth’s concept of the “presence-effect” of film.
Chapter 1 questions if and how photography can add a conceptual layer of meaning
to representing the human-nature relation. In section 1.1, I will argue that photography
played a significant role in the land art movement - especially for Mendieta’s Silueta - not just documentarily but also conceptually. Section 1.2 will then focus more on the relationship
between the female body and nature in photographic representation, asserting that the
tradition of the nude in nature has changed due to the feminist movement in art in the seventies.
Turning towards the moving image in chapter 2, I will ask how its time-based or space-based presentation in the museum affects the expression of ecofeminism. In section 2.1, I continue my interest in Mendieta’s oeuvre in order to contrast the effects of photography discussed in section 1.1 with those of film. An exhibition by Pipilotti Rist provides the basis for section 2.2, to discover the possibilities the spatialization of video art gives for an ecofeminist conception of media ecology.
Chapter 3 moves towards the discussion on affectivity. Considering the significance
of the visitor’s body and the artwork’s materiality, I attempt to find out how lens-based
media is used to express the female body and its experience. Section 3.1 repositions the debate from section 2.2 - about the presence of the moving image in time vs. space - into affect theory. Lastly, section 3.2 will revisit the figure of the goddess and how her image can be reevaluated through lens-based art.
Chapter 1
Photographic Transitions in Representing the Human-Nature Relation
The issue of representation in photography is important, since photography is associated with the ‘real’ - the documentary. As a photograph frames an object or subject, it affects our perception of that object or subject. However, the role of photography is often overlooked in art where the land is the main medium. Hence my question: what conceptual value does the use of photography add to representations of the human-nature relation?
In this chapter, the relationship between humans and nature will serve as the
overarching theme within which to consider how specific female artists challenge the
conventions of photographic form and aesthetics. In section 1.1, the documentary form will be considered, where it is proposed that the photography of land art is often not merely documentary but also conceptual. Due to its ecological interventions and reflection on the
relationship between humans and nature, the land art movement has close ties to
ecofeminism. As both movements emerged around the same time period, it is a good place to begin this thesis, to explore how the human-nature relation is represented and challenged as well as to investigate the role of female artists and photography as a medium. Robert Smithson’s notion of ‘non-site’ and George Baker’s take on the series will allow for a closer look into the role of photography in the land art of Ana Mendieta.
Section 1.2 will focus on the representation of the female nude in nature, charting a transition from pictorialism to modern photography by female artists. Feminist theories of the male gaze and ecofeminist conceptions of essentialism will be discussed in relation to
female photographers from the seventies. Goddess feminism will be explored through the
work of Mary Beth Edelson while Walter Benjamin’s idea of the aura in photography will be connected to depictions of the goddess of Venus. Lastly, David William Foster’s perspective of Laura Aguilar’s self-portraiture will shed light upon the role of the environment in the nude in nature.
1.1. From Documentary to Conceptual: Ana Mendieta’s Land Art
Amanda Boetzkes claims in The Ethics of Earth Art (2010) that, “nature exceeds the scope of human knowledge and systems of representation” (3). Central to humankind is our curiosity and eagerness for knowledge. In the process of collecting knowledge, humans categorize and
frame information to make sense of it. Documentary photography, like science and
technology, is a tool to frame or focus on a particular subject to gain an understanding of it.
Nature photography for example, aims to precisely document the details of nature,
sometimes making it seem as though humans have the power to stop the earth in its tracks - to control it, mark it, and understand it. Documentary photography is at the centre of the human perception and attitude towards nature, since we still associate truth with
documentary. Although humans want to know and grasp everything, what Boetzkes suggests
is that nature is too complex to be limited by our modes of representation. Although
documentary photographers have ‘captured’ nature in a myriad of ways, controlling the
subject’s meaning and perception, the earth ultimately resists representation.
Boetzkes explores how art can make us aware of these limited systems of
representation, “by forging an aesthetic awareness of how nature exceeds these discourses
and representations” (2). In so doing, she creates the broader notion of earth art, which is usually limited to an association with the land art movement. She suggests that ecologically 13
conscious art was also borne out of other art movements from the sixties and seventies, such as performance art and conceptual art. Something that these movements have in common is
their ephemerality, due to which many artworks only continue to exist through
documentation and thus depend on photography (Zucker & Harris). To what extent can the photographic documentations of land art be considered for their own artistic merit, aesthetic significance, and contribution to new conceptual meanings?
The possibility of photography having an artistic rather than merely documentary
role in land art will be uncovered by firstly examining the role of photography in one of the most famous works of land art - Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Smithson’s concept of 13 “Land art” is an abbreviation for the term “landscape art”.
non-site will be discussed and tested with regard to Mendieta’s Silueta series. The ephemeral nature of this series will allow for a reflection upon photographic notions of absence, trace, and death. Lastly, Silueta will be revisited in light of George Baker’s viewpoint on narrative and stasis in photography.
The land art movement draws attention to the boundaries of documentary photography and the possibilities for a conceptual approach to documenting interventions with the landscape. The movement began in the 1960s and, according to art historian Marilyn Stokstad, “sought to take art back to nature and out of the marketplace” (1144). Land artists wanted to escape the confines of the museum institution and commerciality of the art world, but were often brought back to art institutions in the form of documentation. Being site-specific, the
artworks cannot travel and sometimes disappear, fading back into nature. Others impose14
themselves upon the earth, disrupting the environment or changing the landscape for several years. No matter the shape or duration of the land artwork however, photography is central15
to not only documenting the work, but doing so in a way that captures the artwork’s
impression and meaning visually.
The vital role of photography in land art is evident through Smithson’s 457
meter-long spiral created in 1970, called Spiral Jetty. Photography is used not only for
documentary means, but also to communicate or record the artwork’s essential conceptual
aspects. Gianfranco Gorgoni, a photographer who travelled across the United States to
document the most famous land artworks in the seventies, photographed Spiral at a slightly heightened angle in order to distinguish the human figure standing at the spiral’s edge
(Cohen) (fig. 1.4). Although black and white is the traditional aesthetic choice for a
documentary photograph, in Gorgoni’s photograph, it also functions to intensify the contrast
between the dark shape of the spiral artwork and its muted environment. Furthermore, the
14 A subcategory of land art is “ecovention” (ecology and invention), which includes art projects with a specific environmental concern in mind and often aesthetically merge into nature (Wildly 60). An example of this type of land art is the work of Patricia Johanson.
15 Land artists such as Richard Long and Robert Smithson are celebrated for these types of large-scale sculptures and/or interventions, which have also dominated the genre in terms of being published and
human figure, which is Smithson, becomes a black silhouette that merges into the spiral, as if becoming one of thousands of rocks that the spiral is compiled of. By adding Smithson into
the photograph, Gorgoni reflects upon the relationship between the artist, his creation, and
the landscape.
Two essential concepts of Spiral - time and non-site - cannot be communicated
through a single photograph. Although the spiral remains intact today, it is slowly
disappearing and in a state of constant change due to being exposed to the natural elements. These changes occur over several months and years, their documentation depending upon
photography. An aerial photographer from the Dia Art Foundation documents the artwork
twice a year since 2012, but the ultimate uncontrollability of the site and the artwork’s
unrepresentability are key features of Spiral. Steve Zucker & Beth Harris discuss Smithson’s interest in entropy - the idea in physics that the natural tendency of all things on earth is to move from order to disorder, to chaos. They state that, “Smithson is imposing a geometric order into this natural landscape, into this vast space that is in the process, over millions of
years, disassembling”. The artwork adapts itself to the environment, becomes synonymous
with the natural processes of the site, and will eventually once again become one with the
environment.
Smithson’s accompanying video and essay to Spiral point toward the unrepresentability of the site, which Boetzkes examines in her chapter “Spiral Jetty: Allegory
and the Recovery of the Elemental” (2010). Like all temporary or constantly-changing
artwork, the artwork is “dispersed and located in the interaction between the site and the textual media that represent it” (Boetzkes 67). Smithson coined the term ‘Nonsite’ to refer to his gallery installations made using material derived from one of his site-specific works (fig. 1.5). Referring to these works, Smithson says that, “the relation of a Nonsite to the site is also like that of language to the world: it is a signifier and the Site is that which is signified”.
Photography, like language, is a representation of the world and can therefore never
encompass the site itself. Boetzkes claims that, “the site’s unrepresentability becomes the subject of the artwork” (67), as one becomes aware of the absence of the site when looking at its representation.
Smithson makes works of art out of documentations of his original land art, adding a new dimension of meaning in the form of an awareness of absence and unrepresentability.
The non-site brings our attention to the fact that a photograph cannot encompass the
marked site, but rather is an intentional framing - a representation - of the site at a specific moment. According to David Green,16 the site is not only marked by the artist’s own hand, but also by the camera, which marks the site and re-materializes this mark into a photograph (263). The camera thus creates a mark made by light whilst capturing this mark in time. This aspect of photography as the trace of a specific time and place, in addition to the idea of
non-site, is reflected through Mendieta’s photographs of her earth-body works. Unlike 17
Smithson’s spiral, one cannot visit what is depicted in Mendieta’s photographs; the
performances and most of the marks have vanished and only continue to exist through their
documentation. Mendieta’s works are non-sites that, due to their ephemerality and inclusion
of (an imprint of) the body, not only meditate upon the absence of the site, but also the
absence of the artist and her performance. I will thus argue that Mendieta’s photographic
documents are at once non-sites and what I shall call “non-performances.”
Just as non-sites are signifiers of the site, non-performances are signifiers of the performance. In other words, the non-performance is a (documentary and conceptual) trace of the performance that has-been. The concept of trace is most palpable in Mendieta’s18 Silueta photographic series (1973-77), where it is three-fold: the material trace or imprint that Mendieta’s body leaves in the earth; the conceptual trace of what humans leave on earth after death; and the temporal trace of the moment that the photograph is taken. The siluetas range from imprints and sculptures in the form of a female body to depictions of Mendieta’s
own body (fig. 1.7). For one specific series of images, Mendieta imprinted her own body into
16 The term “marked site” is how Rosalind Krauss categorized land art such as that of Smithson in her 1979 essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”. She found that these types of artworks in the land are neither
landscape nor not-landscape. This is another way of saying that land art is imposed upon its landscape, yet does not become a part of it. I use this term due to its broadness - it can refer to many different kinds of land
artworks - and connection to Green’s conception of a photographically “marked site”.
17 Mendieta also created sculptures that are materially and formally connected to her sites. The focus of my argument lies within photography, but much could be said about her sculptures in relation to the notion of non-site as well.
the Mexican beach and documented the disappearing mark being swallowed up by the sea (fig. 1.8). The material trace left by Mendieta’s body is not only documented in photographs, but also leaves its presence (Boetzkes 151). As Boetzkes states, “the imprint mortifies its referent, tying together its moment of origin (when the body leaves its mark) with the perpetual loss of that moment” (151). The work is thus paradoxical in nature, since it 19
presents us with both the absence of a real body and at the same time, a presence of the body through its form, its imprint (Rovirosa). The body is at the same time absent and present, but also alien to and subsumed by the earth (Boetzkes 146). Such a series thus brings our attention to the persisting presence of the artist through the lasting documentations of her work but also in a broader sense, the imprint, or ecological footprint, a human individual leaves on earth.
The trace that a human leaves on earth has also been referred to in photography theory, where Susan Sontag states in On Photography (1977) that, “a photograph is not only an image (as painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask” (120). In a discussion of Mendieta’s sculptural and photographic interventions with the land, Ara Osterweil conjures Roland Barthes’ conception of photography as a carnal medium, stating that, “photography’s umbilical link to the body is part of the magic that Mendieta came to believe painting lacked” (3). This ‘umbilical link’ refers to the connection one feels when gazing at the subject in a photograph, which one knows is the trace of a real person (Barthes 81). Barthes
contends with Sontag that photography is evidence of something having been present, or
what he calls the has-been, rather than the resemblance of something to reality (Batchen 40).
Mendieta’s Silueta not only emphasises the absence of her mark and/or performance, but
also its ephemerality and non-existence in reality - its death, its has-been.
The photographs of Mendieta’s interventions with the land, where she was acting out performances and reducing that act to a singular frame, can be seen as a document of the
death of a performance. The moment captured in the photograph is when the act of
performing has passed. Both the imprint and the photograph are traces of the performance,
which become a non-performance. But what if the imprint is enlivened by the shooting of several photographs? This is what art historian George Baker suggests in “Photography’s
Expanded Field” (2005). Based on the quaternary structure that Rosalind Krauss originally
created with regard to the expanding field of sculpture, Baker makes a diagram of the intersection between film and photography, narrative and stasis (fig. 1.6). One might assume
that photography is always still, but Baker positions modernist photography in the
not-narrative-not-stasis section. Although the photographic image was historically characterized by its “petrification or stasis” (25), Baker argues that during the 20th century, the social usage of photography transformed its consumption and, “thrust the photographic signifier into motion” (26). One of the changes Baker identifies is the “aesthetic organization
[of photography] into sequence and series” (25). The photography of land art would
traditionally fall outside of Baker’s diagram due to its straight-forward, static, documentary form. As is being argued in this section however, we could also consider the artistic and
formal choices involved in the photographic documentation of land art. Specifically, the
narrative, or rather not-stasis, qualities of the serial format that Mendieta uses in order to communicate key concepts pertaining to the original earth-body works.
Although photography is inherently still, the artist has the ability to create a sense of movement or time by juxtaposing different images next to each other. Mendieta did not just
use photography for documentary sake but also artistically, in order to emphasize certain
parts of the sculpture/performance by taking pictures from different angles and distances. In Untitled from her Silueta series, the signifier of Mendieta’s photograph - the silueta - is thrust into motion. Untitled consists of multiple photographs of an imprint of the Goddess pose (arms held up at a 90-degree angle) into the sand (fig. 1.8). Over the course of the sculpture/performance disappearing, Mendieta was able to recreate the scene in
photographic fragments. The viewer fills up the gap of the movement between one still
image and the next, where the imprint fills up with water and empties as the sea retracts. The selection of nine images shows the viewer how the sea swallows up the trace of her body and leaves a less distinguishable imprint every time it retreats in different photographs. One can
passing of time, which is always an element that becomes acutely obvious and real when looking at a photograph, but is here elongated due to the work’s serial form.
The beginning of this section set out to see whether an aesthetic awareness of the unrepresentability of nature can be forged through the photographic documentation of land art. I found that Smithson’s non-sites problematize the representation of the earth and his own representation of the site of his artwork. A land artwork like Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is
positioned in-between the site and its representations, whereas Mendieta’s earth-body works
only continue to exist through their documentations. I argued that Mendieta’s photography - particularly her Silueta series - can be considered as both non-site and non-performance, since it can neither encompass the place-specific site nor the time-specific performance of the original artwork. Her photography is thus a framing of her has-been performances in
nature. The conceptual connections to absence, trace, and death within her photography
series enforced this idea of non-performance. Baker’s proposition of the modernist image in
motion however, opened up the possibility for a non-static representation of Silueta.
Photography is therefore not only a necessary medium for its documentation of ephemeral artworks in nature, but can also become the conceptual grounding of the artwork in the process of framing.
1.2. From Painterly to Photographic: The Female Nude in Nature
When thinking of the female nude in the history of modern art, one may think of Paul
Gauguin’s Tahitian girls, Édouard Manet’s reclining prostitute, or Henri Matisse’s abstract
renderings of the female form. Although feminists have opposed the narrow and
male-dominated view of women in art history, what I have found to be overlooked is the
artists’ shared use of nature or natural elements that are often used to enhance the
femininity of their female subjects/forms. Gauguin’s female subjects are depicted amidst the
Tahitian landscape; Manet’s portraits of women feature flowers, plants, and/or fruits; and
These three men are amongst the most famous figurative painters of the 20th century, but one of the most famous female artists symbolic for this time period is Frida Kahlo, known for her self-portraits with flower crowns, animals, and jungle backgrounds (fig. 1.12). This visual association between the female body and nature is thus not limited to the male gaze and seems to be a part of a deep-set history of portraying women with ‘natural’ symbols of femininity in painting. Reaching further than these specific painters, we may identify this as a long tradition in art history of portraying women as goddesses borne out of the earth, in touch with nature, or infused within it.
Considering this art historical tradition of the nude in nature, how has this trope evolved in the medium photography? In order to map a transition from romantic to critical representations of the nude in nature, I will first look at the painterly aesthetic of pictorialist
photography. Anne Brigman will be considered as a female pictorialist photographer that
resisted the conventional compositions of the time. Moving towards more contemporary and
photographic aesthetics, key feminist issues concerning the female body - the male gaze,
essentialism, and the concealment of nudity - will be discussed with regard to their connections with nature. The symbolism of the goddess will be analyzed as a framework
upon which female artists such as Mary Beth Edelson enact their agency as creators and
active subjects. Turning towards the goddess of beauty, the painting Birth of Venus (1485) will be compared to Honey Long & Prue Stent’s appropriation of this image in Venus Milk (2015). Lastly, Laura Aguilar’s photography will serve as a basis upon which to explore how the environment is used in the nude in nature.
What is it that makes a nude woman glorious? It will be found that she is at once the context of what is beautiful in nature and the contrast to what is rugged and crude. She brings to the varied and heterogeneous lines of a landscape the flowing curves, the homogeneous form of the human’s place on earth (Blumann 3).
Written in 1918 by photographer Sigismund Blumann, “The Human Form in Photography”
is a brief review of photographers in the midst of modernism depicting the nude in nature.
In this particular excerpt, Blumann describes what makes an excellent nude photograph,
simultaneously cause some kind of contrast. Seeking to imitate certain qualities of painting,
pictorialists (late 19th and early 20th century) would manipulate the photograph to look
softer and even have brushstrokes in order to produce romantic pictures with a sense of drama or poetry (Gough 12). Included in Blumann’s article is a photograph by Herbert B. Turner, of a half-nude woman sitting on the side of a lake, the sun at her back, lighting up her soft hair (fig. 1.13). Such photographs by male artists were the norm.
However, half of Blumann’s article is instead dedicated to discussing the talent of
Anne Brigman, who embraced the nude - a subject that had before been preserved for male
artists - as a powerful way to stage her mythical and symbolic scenes. Brigman took to the landscape as an opportunity to create portraits of herself and close friends. Utilizing her
independence as a working female photographer, the subjects in her photographs often
reflect her own personal strength and empowerment (Summerlin 60). Although she faced judgements of essentialism due to her nakedness, according to Melody Gough, “her pictures helped solidify photography’s ascendancy to the status of fine art for the first time in the history of the medium” (11). Blumann also recognised this in his article, as he states that Brigman is the best when it comes to communicating a “definite idea” through a photograph. More than just a beautiful woman sitting in nature, “her figures are so intimately related to the surroundings as to be indispensably a part of the entirety” (Blumann 3). Although similar in their pictorial qualities, Brigman’s Soul of the Blasted Pine stands in clear contrast to Turner’s In the Sunlight (figs. 1.13-1.14). A dramatic energy exudes from Brigman’s stretched
out body, which, due to the bizarrely skewed horizon, simultaneously becomes part of the
earth, tree and air.
Brigman is one of the first female photographers to show such creative freedom, stepping away from the traditions of the nude set up by predecessors of men. Since the representation of nude women had been limited to the perspective of male artists, most nudes presented the female body as an object of desire and beauty. This tradition continued
into the 20th century with Rimantas Dichavičius’ photographs showing a romantic view of
young women in serene scenes in nature (fig. 1.15). 20 Laura Mulvey most famously
20 This is not to say that there are not any contemporary male artists that challenge the tradition of the nude. Historically however, there has been a prevalence of representations of women as passive figures or characters.
recognized this representation of women in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema,” published in 1975. Although Mulvey discussed the specific genre of 1950s
Hollywood film, the notion of the male gaze has since been adapted to many different forms
of representation. Before Mulvey’s conceptualisation of this phenomenon, John Berger took
a broader view at how art and media representations affect our ‘way of seeing’. He stated that, “women are depicted in quite a different way from men - not because the feminine is different from the masculine - but because the “ideal” spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him” (64). Mulvey noticed how the actions of female characters always revolve around the plot of the male characters. As she explains that, “woman [is] still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (2). Even though a whole universe and narrative is created in films that usually centres around one point of view, this also holds true for photography; the artist forms the meaning of the image through framing, composition, etc. and the subject bears the photograph’s meaning.
So how have female photographers claimed their place as makers of meaning instead
of mere bearers? And how do they appropriate symbols first employed by the painter’s male gaze to reclaim the female nude in nature?
Brigman chronicled the first step in the transition from passive object of the male
gaze towards active subject in one’s own photograph. Her “proto-feminist landscapes” paved
the way for many female artists after her, although most artists only started creating at
concurring times with the land art and feminist art movement from the seventies (Wolfe).
Perhaps this peak in female artists creating nudes in nature was sparked by Linda Nochlin’s
1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists,” which includes the following
statement: “there exist [...] no representations of artists drawing from the nude model which
include women in any role but that of the nude model” (Nochlin 160). Like Birgman, many
of the artists opted for self-portraiture, occupying the role of the model themselves and
thereby avoiding the problematic relation between an active gazer (photographer) and
passive object. Artists like Mendieta, Edelson, Judy Dater and Judy Chicago used certain poses and angles to distinguish their nudes in nature from those of the traditional male view. A noticeable contrast is present in how their subjects often raise their arms in order to draw
attention to themselves, whereas in Turner and Dichavičius’ pictures, the subjects’ arms are limp and passive (figs. 1.13-1.17). The women’s strong stances often symbolise empowered goddess figures - the goddess being a powerful creator instead of a passive subject (Wolfe).
Like Brigman however, some artists like Mendieta were dismissed as being
essentialist rather than feminist. And although images of female bodies celebrating such
notions as fertility may conjure up ideas of an essential link between women and nature, the
artists are often trying to communicate something more than this. As Catrin Gersdorf
explains in her article, “Nature and the Body: Ecofeminism, Land Art, and the Work of Ana
Mendieta (1948-1985)” (2006):
Associations of female body and landscape, while they can never completely skirt the
danger of articulating oppressive ideologies, can nevertheless trouble established
ways of thinking, speaking, and visualising selfhood and cultural identity (217). In her series Woman Rising (1973), Edelson for instance, assumes a specific pose upon which she paints or collages many different interpretations of goddess archetypes, such as those, “found in the Hindu depictions of Kali Ma, pre-Christian sculptures of Sheela na Gig, or
Greek images of Baubo” (Zadawaski 334-336). Arms raised with palms towards the viewer,
finger stretched, and legs stood wide apart, Edelson sees this pose as, “calling on the
Goddess; a way of getting Her attention, identifying with Her, and slipping into Her body. I was calling on energy and on Spirit” (qtd. in Kimball 98). Edelson further expresses this energy and spirit in her images by painting energy waves on top of one of her silver-gelatin black & white photographs (fig. 1.18). In her discussion of Edelson’s goddess-infused work,
Mary Zadawski suggests that those who critique Edelson’s work as essentialist have not
assessed the vitality and powerful stance she brings to the goddess in Woman Rising. She
states that, “goddess mythology and imagery can provide an alternative and powerful
language for the self-realization of women as it breaks free from stereotypical boundaries
placed on women by God-language” (334). Through developing her own photographic 21
language and channelling the goddess, Edelson reflects upon the multiplicity of her own
21 “God-language” is a term that Zadawaski borrows from Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow and refers to the male-centric language used in the three main Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
being through the different archetypes she assigns to herself whilst simultaneously symbolizing a connection to the general experience of being a woman. Much like how
Joanna Walker writes about the personal and universal in Mendieta’s imprints, “they are
pseudo self-portraits but equally they could be interpreted as being generalised ‘symbols’ of the female mark” (23).
There is a complex relation to concealment in representations of the female body. Traditionally, the female body would be partly concealed in order to maintain the subject’s
modesty or include an erotic aspect for the male gaze. In Turner’s and Dichavičius’
photographs, for instance, either the top or bottom half of the body are intentionally hidden (figs. 1.13 and 1.15). Contemporary duo Honey Long & Prue Stent actively think about their methods of concealment in order to complicate the voyeurism of the viewer’s gaze (Shuxia
201). They confront the viewer with female bodies made anonymous by covering them in
fabrics that cling to their flesh. The artists go into conversation with the land, not by blending their subjects into the environment, but by seeking out an animalistic relation to nature. Banana Slug and Rhinestone Kelp for instance, put the female body in the absurd position of an aquatic animal and plant (figs. 1.19-1.20). By merging the surreal with the beautiful, a new active female subject emerges from nature.
Unlike the female artists previously discussed, who took portraits of themselves in order to avoid objectifying their subject, Long & Stent also portray others in order to challenge the complex relations between beauty, nudity, nature, the female body, and the gaze. They see the historical role of beauty as being the female counterpart to the masculine concept of the sublime:
The idea of beautification involves a strong nuance of trying to conceal, pacify something that’s otherwise confrontational, dangerous or even gruesome. Historically, beautifying has been a way of controlling, and we wanted to look at how this operates in relation to the female body (qtd. in Baconsky).
This aspect of concealment as a form of exercising control is apparent through art historical representations of the female body in painting. The Venus in Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1485) for example, is trying to cover herself with both hands while the female figure
flanking her left side is also in the act of attempting to cover Venus’ naked body with a cloak (fig. 1.21).
Alongside its representation of (the concealment of) beauty, is also the painting’s depiction of ‘aura’. On the other side of the painting are two figures blowing at the Roman
goddess, which was interpreted by 16th century writer Giorgio Vasari as endowing Venus
with aura, meaning a ‘light breeze’ (Takac). As conceptualized by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), aura is the magical or spiritual essence an artwork possesses due to its uniqueness and presentation in a certain setting such as a museum or church. Benjamin argues that the aura is destroyed by the modern ability to
reproduce an artwork using photography or film. Because beauty is also regarded as
something unique to an individual, special and other-wordly (in the sense of goddesses like Venus), perhaps we can also conceive of the aura in terms of the female body, which is historically represented not only as something beautiful and unique, but also as something powerful that needs to be controlled or concealed. The aura of the female body - its mystique - could then also be destroyed, perhaps most effectively through the reproducible medium of photography, which then simultaneously disrupts the aura surrounding the artwork.
Long & Stent appropriate Botticelli’s Birth in Venus Milk (2015). A female figure stands in the centre of a large rock edging on the flat sea (fig. 1.22). Her body and face are covered by a pink fabric, yet the outline of her legs, breasts and face are eerily visible. Unlike
the shy stance of Botticelli’s Venus, this figure stands upright with her face outwards and
directly pointed towards the lens. And instead of a light breeze, the fabric is caught in a
strong wind, shaping around her head as if mimicking the cloak of the grim reaper; this
venus is not the personification of birth, fertility, or love, but instead death. The shell that Venus emerges from in Birth symbolizes her birth as a beautiful creation from the sea - a pearl. In an article about “seashell aesthetics,” writer Martabel Wasserman suggests an22 alternative interpretation. Noticing that it is a half-shell that is depicted in Birth, she finds this to be a significant indicator of death; that is, the death of the organism that used to live in the full shell. The shape of a shell in Long & Stent’s rendering is imitated in the pool of
pink liquid that the female figure seems to emerge from. The pink of the body flows seamlessly into that of the ‘shell’, suggesting a merger of the goddess and nature, as the rock, water and the goddess at once become connected. Whereas Botticelli used the shell to refer to the symbolism of the birth of beauty, the shell in Venus is instead attached to its origin of rock, thereby connecting the shell to its materiality in nature instead of to some external cultural meaning.
The environment is an important factor in the photographs by women trying to reclaim the nude in nature. It is not only the representation of the nude female body that must be re-examined, but also how it is positioned in nature, and in what kind of
environment. Romanticist painting and pictorial photography used the device of pathetic
fallacy as a way to make a connection between an individual subject’s emotions and their23 inanimate surroundings (Foster 78). In his book chapter “Woman’s Body & Other Objects of Nature,” David William Foster repeatedly conjures up images of sylphs and Edenic meadows as the ideal figure and setting of the traditional nude in nature. In the Sunlight comes quite close to such a picturesque scene, as the subject is in harmony with her natural surroundings (fig. 1.13). Blumann stated that a glorious depiction of the nude in nature, “brings to the varied and heterogeneous lines of a landscape the flowing curves, the homogeneous form of the human’s place on earth” (3). This is a way of saying that human and nature are opposites - heterogeneous and homogeneous - yet also form some kind of balanced relation together. Foster’s chapter focuses on Laura Aguilar’s series of fifteen photographs taken in 1996 in the New Mexican Desert, and suggests that Aguilar’s “deconstructive photographic gaze” (78) disrupts the balance between human and nature that is depicted in the tradition of the nude in nature.
Foster elaborates on this notion in his analysis of Aguilar’s Nature Self-Portrait #1 (fig. 1.23). The lines, which Blumann also refers to in his quotation, are a very important part of this photograph, as the line on Aguilar’s back correlates to the crevice in the rock below her. Yet, unlike Blumann’s praise for the “flowing curves” that suggest a continuity between subject and nature, the two lines in Aguilar’s photograph are not entirely aligned. This is not
only disruptive to the eye, which is naturally drawn to symmetry, but according to Foster also indicates that the body cannot become fully fused with its environment. The texture of her smooth skin in comparison to the rough rocks also halts this fusion, where the difference
between these textures is emphasised by the black and white format. Amelia Jones declares
that, “the boundaries between human and nonhuman melt away” (93) in Aguilar’s work.
With specific reference to Nature Self-Portrait #7 (fig. 1.24), she contends that although Aguilar invites the male gaze with her central position in the photograph, she ‘others’ herself
by mimicking the nonhuman boulders in the landscape and rejects the gaze by turning her
back to the viewer (fig. 1.24). Foster instead argues that the point of Aguilar’s series lies
precisely in the fact that these boundaries do not entirely melt away (80). While some of
Aguilar’s photographs distinctively blur the boundaries between her body and nature - in
Grounded #106 (1992) for instance, one does not even notice, at first glance, the presence of Aguilar’s body in the landscape - I would concur with Foster that there is always a deliberate disconnection between the lines of the landscape and her body (fig. 1.25).
By depicting humans and nature in harmony, the use of pathetic fallacy in pictorial
photography romanticizes the human-nature relation instead of showing its complexity.
Moreover, an eroticization of the gaze takes place in these early photographic nudes in nature due to their aesthetics of softening the body and the landscape. Hence the reason why many female artists instead opt for a non-romantic natural environment: Long & Stent make the rugged rock the centre-point out of which the Venus emerges (fig. 1.22); Edelson depicts herself in a mountainous area in Goddess Head (fig. 1.16); and Aguilar situates herself in the hostile desert. By choosing an environment that is in conflict with the body, these artists complicate the relation between human and nature instead of soothing it.
The objective of this section was to uncover the photographic strategies that female artists use to reclaim representations of the female nude in nature. Whereas pictorialists created painterly and romantic depictions of the nude in nature, female artists during and after the seventies sought to deconstruct the male gaze and its symbolism of femininity. The issue of how to present the female body nude in nature without erotisizing or essentializing
it is at the forefront of these works. Whether it is by positioning the subject in environments
at odds with the human body, confronting or rejecting the viewer’s gaze, addressing the
power in concealing the body, or assuming the Great Goddess pose, female artists boldly
attempt to reclaim the nude in nature in order to photographically communicate more complex human relations to nature.
In both sections, the idea of framing in photography played an essential role. In the documentation of land art, certain concepts were added through the use of photography; the passing of time was mimicked through a serial format and the ephemerality of human life was emphasized by the photograph’s connection to trace. In capturing their nude portraits in
nature, photographers used the strategies noted above to frame female bodies in ways that
differentiate their images from conventional representations of the nude in nature. Whether photography acts as their main medium or not, it plays a large role in artists’ interventions in nature - not only as a practical recording device, but also to shed light upon specific aspects of the human-nature relation through the process of framing.
