Marie Yates
Marie Yates is a British photographer who investigates representation of certain groups of people, in particular women. She was a founding artist of the conceptual feminist art. She uses several techniques and combines text and her images. She started out as a painter but went onto study fine art. She found is difficult to be an artist in a male dominated world, these feelings remained even as she became a photographer. Her 1976 work Oppositional Frameworks 1(see fig. 1), shows a forest with four words around the image; external, female, underdeveloped, body.
She is using the trees as a metaphor for the female figure. It is interesting as she is using landscapes combined with text to make her point, there is no people shown. The image itself is quite banal, it is just a scene from a forest, it is not picturesque or what you would expect, but it works. Another series that she address feminism in is Image/Woman/Text (see fig. 2), which shows images of women which have been covered with text.
Her aim was to look at the preconceptions people have about women. This is quite a task as in society it seems to be ingrained in us to question everything a woman does, as if she has to justify just living. Women are often held to extreme expectations, which makes it hard to be yourself, it becomes a difficult world for young girls to grow up in. It is something that needs addressing, and Yates does this in a creative way, which draws your attention away from the women to the text. The actual images of the women are cropped, blurry or obscured, the women have lost their identity by doing this. Preconceptions are usually completely off, and they put a woman in a difficult state of mind, this hasn’t changed over time, this problem still remains. But Yates managed to note it in 1979. Even though it was a completely different time to it is now, the problem still remains.
Bibliography
Woodward, D. (2016). The Artist using Landscape to make a Bold Feminist Statement. At: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/8790/the-Artist-using-landscape-to-make-a-bold-feminist-statement(Accessed on 25th of July 2019).
Yates, M. (1984-1985). The Only Woman. [Photograph – Online]. At: www.users.otenet.gr/~mates/theonlywomanproject.html(Accessed on 25th of July 2019).
Yates, M. (1989). Both Sides Now. At: www.users.otenet.gr/~mystery/bothsidesnowproject.html(Accessed on 25th of July 2019).
Yates, M. (1982). The Missing Woman. [Photograph – Online]. At: www.users.otenet.gr/~myates/themissingwomanproject.html(Accessed on 25th on July 2019).
Figures
Fig. 1. Yates, M. (1976). Oppositional Frameworks 1. [Photograph – Online]. At: www.otenet.gr/~mystery/signalsproject1975.html(Accessed on 25th of July 2019).
Fig. 2. Yates, M. (1979). Image/Woman/Text. [Photograph – Online]. At: www.users.otenet.gr/~myates/imagewomantextproject.html(Accessed on 25th of July 2019).
Georgina's Body of Work 