BELLE DE JOUR
2002
It is with the project entitled Belle de Jour that I began to work specifically with women as my primary subject and with research-based images culled from the canons of art history and vernacular culture to critically examine the history of female portraiture and challenge deeply entrenched beauty standards that permeate the media. During this production period, I looked closely at the portrait paintings of Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Johannes Vermeer and John Singer Sargent; the gender performance in the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron, the Contessa di Castiglione and Cindy Sherman; and the overly saturated unrealistic womanly ideal venerated in the fashion and film industries. Belle de Jourconsists of 22 colour photographs of self-possessed women operating on their terms, in various states of underdress, masquerading as iconic and archetypal figures in boudoir-type and studio settings in which an arrangement of fabric backdrop, accessories such as gloves, veils and drapes capture the body in all its shifting beauty.
