#poeticobjects

This was the final image used in our Poetic Objects workshop.

In this image we aimed to capture toxic masculinity through the hands (particularly the wrists) becoming entangled in the plastic wrapping of a six pack of beers. We chose to work with this particular piece of plastic because it is notorious for allowing things to crawl into it and become trapped, especially in the oceans. But also because of the play on the words ‘six pack’ being a toxic idealised male body type. 

Originally we were going to use a beer can, however when experimenting with our images we decided to opt for the hands holding a pint glass. We thought this allowed more room for interpretation because the amount of beer left in the glass could be read into. 

Ideally we wanted to do another shoot where the hands were holding a pint glass with only a small amount of beer left in it. This could be read as the male pressure to drink in stereotype and become trapped and confused. 

For our poetic objects workshop myself and my partner explored the theme of masculinity and femininity. We were not sure what theme to take forwards on the Tuesday so on the Wednesday task we set about taking a series of different shots using items which stereotypically represented men and women. 

In this shot we explored the themes of:

women in the workplace

oppression 

gender pay gap 

the glass ceiling in business 

Here, we explored:

hierarchy between the genders in business 

female expectation 

In this shot we looked at:

toxic masculinity 

alcoholism 

addiction 

competition 

restrain and struggle 

finally, here we looked at:

female oppression

female expectation 

housewifery 

industry 

POETIC OBJECTS-

POETIC OBJECTS-

To kick things off we did some really funky paper cuttings merging two objects into a single image. We had to be speedy and were encouraged to be as inventive as possible, using inverts and outsides of pieces - or layering the paper.

POETIC OBJECTS- 

For the project Poetic objects, I was with Miranda. We decided to first have a wide look at a variety of cross-overs via objects; We doing this through a mind-map, linking ideas and objects to try and reach new ideas. After a while we realised we had a bit of a theme going and decided to press ahead, making thumb-nail idea pages. I feel this worked to our advantage as soon enough we had a wide variety of ideas that meant we could cherry pick the strongest ones to develop. In our first crit it was agreed that we would develop the patchwork/ doormat idea further – using dishcloths or pants to represent a woman’s role in the house. We had trouble deciding between the two, we felt pants shaped in a doormat could represent consent, concerning the idea of women being used as sexual doormats, also linking to marital rape. However, we also liked the idea of dishcloths being made into a blanket. With this we were trying to allude to the idea of a ‘housewife’ with some women waking up and going to sleep still thinking about the housework and what they have to do.