Marie Tomanova – [↖] By the Waterfalls (2016); [↗] Green Tenderness (2015); [↓] Untitled (2016)

The Museum of Sex here in NYC (as opposed to the one in Amsterdam and there may be more I don’t know about) is running an exhibit called NSFW: Female Gaze.

I’m not a fan of the venue or the current bandwagon curatorial trend otherwise known as ‘the Female Gaze’–it’s generally preposterous (at best) and mistakes inversion for subversion (at worst); also, the people who actually go out of their way to embrace the notion pretty much to a one make godawful work. (However, like the term ‘post-rock’–which operates similarly: a pretty reliable shortcut to some great music when you weed out the bands who refer to themselves as post-rockers and focus on the bands who eschew the distinction.)

(And to be clear–I don’t object to women who are photographers. This blog strives to favor women photographers and image makers in such a fashion that 60% of the posts are created by women; what I object to is the idea that we can correct for the art historical problematics of the male gaze through nothing more than paying lip service to more diverse representation without actually acknowledging a multiplicity of factors beyond just male photographer vs female photographer….)

What appeals to me about Tomanova is the quality of her work. She’s working with a Canon dSLR and a hotshoe flash. Yeah, I know… her results are pretty incredible.

But in the video trailer for the exhibit, she mentions that her motivating notion is the idea of “how nude is too nude?”

It’s an interesting question. (That is supported by her work, incidentally.)

The other thing I notice from her video is that her way of working is much more unrushed. As someone who is also interested in notions of public vs private and nudity, I have to say that I find her process fascinating. Usually, if you’re shooting nudes in public, you set up the shot, strip and get the shot as quickly as possible–so that you can get dressed again before anyone stumbles upon the scene uninvited.

You get the feeling Tomanova sets the camera up, gets undressed and then experiments. Trying out a bunch of different poses and frames before getting dressed again and breaking things down to move on.

There’s something very audacious about her work. (I would LOVE to be able to work that way, honestly. It’s not that I’m worried about people sneaking up on me while I’m naked and more what happens as a result of someone potentially stumbling upon me…)

I recall how Szarkowski divided fine art photography into two parts: mirrors and windows. I’ve never really agreed 100% with him but I do at least see the utility of his taxonomy. It strikes me that there’s another dichotomy in photography: reproduction vs discovery.

Reproduction would be where you have a very clear picture in you rmind of something you want to make into a photographer or image whereas discovery is more organic, you don’t know what you want but you are aware that you’ll know what you’re looking for when you see it.

I think the best work does both at the same time. But I think Tomanova is decidedly in the discovery camp. And honestly I think if it’s a choice between the two, I’ll take discover over reproduction any day of the week and twice on Sunday.