GENDER & JUXTAPOSITION: GASLIGHTING

GENDER & JUXTAPOSITION 

BRIEF:

  

To create an illustration and a story board with 10 pictures on gender and juxtaposition using different approaches, based on your understanding. After which create an image manipulation using Image,Illustration and text.

THE TOPIC:

We explore the concept of gender and how it's been visually depicted in form of image through a diverse range of perspectives. We shall study the semiotics and various social and indigenious contexts of gender depiction using the theory of juxtaposition.

WHAT  IS GENDER?

Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed. As are the gender roles  associated with it.

I had gone through a wide areas revolving the topic like gender roles, gender bias hierachy, patriarchy, matriarchy 

POWER IN GENDER: Power is the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way. Power is distributed in the form of either male dominance ( Patriarchy) or fermale dominance (Matriarchy)

GENDER ABUSE: power can sometimes lead to the abuse of it or treatment of it is as privilege. There are several types of abuses:

•PSYCHOLOGICAL

•EMOTIONAL

•FINANCIAL OR MATERIAL

•DISCRIMINATORY

•PHYSICAL

•SOCIAL NEGLECT

MY MICRO TOPIC RELATED TO ABUSE:

GASLIGHTING

 Gas-lighting is a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory, perception, and sanity. Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

GASLIGHTING AS AN ABUSE TACTIC:

• VICTIM FORGETS A CHUNK OF HIS/HER MEMORY
• GASLIGHTING CAN HAPPEN COLLECTIVELY

–POLYRELATIONSHIPS

• –FAMILY OF THE ABUSER
• –PEER GROUPS

• YOU WERE ALWAYS PRESENT MENTALLY BUT UNCONSCIOUSLY NEGLET OURSELVES

TACTICS USED BY AN ABUSER

(GASLIGHTER):

• By discrediting you or making others think you are unstable
• Using a mask of confidence, assertiveness, and/or fake
• He/she will try to change the topic by usual sentences like, “You’re imagining things—that never happened!”  “No, you’re wrong, you didn’t remember right.”
• By trivializing how you feel and what you think, the gaslighter gains more and more power over you, e.g. “Why are you being so sensitive?” “You don’t need to get angry over a little thing like that!” “I was just joking around, why are you taking things so seriously?” 

AFTERMATH:

The victim feels the after effects of the gaslighting in three stages:

•DISBELIEF

•DEFENSIVE

•DEPRESSION

–RELIVING

–AVOIDANCE( AVOIDING PEOPLE)

–AROUSAL(LACK OF CONCENTRATION, IRRITABILITY)

SIGNS OF BEING GASLIGHTED

•Do You Question the Validity of Your Memories and Experiences?

•Are There People in Your Life Who Actively Discredit Your Memories and Experiences?

•When You Call Someone Out on Hurtful or Abusive Behavior, Are They Quick to Dismiss Both You and the Situation?

•When You Try and Bring Up Hurtful or Abusive Behavior, Do They Immediately Turn It Around and Play the Victim?

PORTRAYING GASLIGHTING THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY STORYBOARD:

The storyboard you are about to see is based on the phases of a victim goes through during and after gaslighting.

Ideation: For this i had simply divided each phase into a mood a victim experiences throughout the abuse;

·        happy

·        confused

·        scared

·        self doubting

·        depression

·        defensive

·        self realisation

The idea for the storyboard came from a very famous movie Gaslight (1944) where the protagonist Paula( Ingrid bergman) is gaslighted by her husband in order to become rich. In this movie we see Paula go through transformations similiar to what i have attempted through my CANON 1200D camera.

Happy

Confused

Scared

Self doubting

Depression

Defensive

Self realisation

PORTRAYING GASLIGHTING THROUGH ILLUSTRATION:

In illustration process i researched various topics and incidences related to gaslighting. For example i came across an article of gaslighting used by East Germany secret police.

''ZERSETZUNG"

Stasi used a method which was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung, and it's described in another guideline. The word is difficult to translate because it means originally "biodegradation." But actually, it's a quite accurate description. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn't try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions.

This  theory helped me evolve the illustration through various sketches finally zeroing on an idea you will see in the final artwork.

FINAL ROUGH SKETCH

''LANTERN"

Lantern was used inspired by the movie Gaslight. It signifies how a brain can be manipulated similiar to light in the lantern.

PORTRAYING GASLIGHTING THROUGH IMAGE MANIPULATION:

In this composition i have manipulated all the photos taken in the storyboard and have compared the change in mood and mental state to the change in moon phases, and finally the juxtaposed face in fire signifies the realisation of the victim and recovery of her from the abuse.

PORTRAYING GASLIGHTING THROUGH JUXTAPOSITION:

Here i have juxtaposed the the face in fire from the image manipulation and as we can see the whole meaning has changed. Now it signifies how mental abuse can burn us slowly like the wick in the lantern.

REFLECTION:

I had never ideated or researched with this intensity before. But the mentorship and support from collegues and teachers made it possible for me to come up with this vastly unearthed issue here in our country and to be able to express it and create awareness about it in my own way. 

IMAGE CREATION: WAYS OF LOOKING

STUDYING 5 TECHNIQUES OF ILLUSRATIONS  AND PHOTOGRAPHY

WAYS OF LOOKING!!!

I have chosen 5 types of illustrations and 5 types of photography techniques. I’ll be talking about each technique in general.

ILLUSTRATIONS:

1.  Cartoon & Humor

Everybody likes cartoon illustrations near the tv listings or on the corner of the front page of the newspaper. These are hilarious and also educational. Educational in the sense these cartoons cover the potboiling topics,current affairs  entertainment or sports through satirical backdrops in illustrations. Modern single-panel gag cartoons, found in magazines, generally consist of a single drawing with a typeset caption positioned beneath, or—much less often—a speech balloon.[6] Newspaper syndicates have also distributed single-panel gag cartoons by Mel Calman, Bill Holman, Gary Larson, George Lichty, Fred Neher and others. Many consider New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno the father of the modern gag cartoon (as did Arno himself). The roster of magazine gag cartoonists includes names like Charles Addams, Charles Barsotti and Chon Day.

EXAMPLES;

 

 

 Vector art

Vector art is done through various softwares like illustrator, coral draw etc. In this art form each image is made up of vector shapes and because of that it is clean and crisp and bolder than work done in photoshop which deals in pixels. Vector graphics editors typically allow rotation, movement (without rotation), mirroring, stretching, skewing, affine transformations, changing of z-order (loosely, what's in front of what) and combination of primitives into more complex objects.More sophisticated transformations include set operations on closed shapes (union, difference, intersection, etc.).

Vector graphics are ideal for simple or composite drawings that need to be device-independent, or do not need to achieve photo-realism. For example, the PostScript and PDF page description languages use a vector graphics model.

reference:http://www.illustrationweb.us/artists/DuncanBeedie/view

      

 

 

3.  Manga

Manga is an art form originating from japan. I used to watch NARUTO and DRAGONBALL Z and was fascinated by this art form. The word "manga" comes from the Japanese word 漫画, composed of the two kanji 漫 (man) meaning "whimsical or impromptu" and 画 (ga) meaning "pictures".

The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of such works as Santō Kyōden's picturebook Shiji no yukikai (1798), and in the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's Manga hyakujo (1814) and the celebrated Hokusai Manga books (1814–1834) containing assorted drawings from the sketchbooks of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai.Rakuten Kitazawa (1876–1955) first used the word "manga" in the modern sense.

In Japanese, "manga" refers to all kinds of cartooning, comics, and animation. Among English speakers, "manga" has the stricter meaning of "Japanese comics", in parallel to the usage of "anime" in and outside Japan. The term "ani-manga" is used to describe comics produced from animation cels.

reference:http://www.illustrationweb.us/artists/Gen/view

  

 

            Graffiti

Graffiti may also express underlying social and political messages and a whole genre of artistic expression is based upon spray paint graffiti styles. Within hip hop culture, graffiti have evolved alongside hip hop music, b-boying, and other elements. Unrelated to hip-hop graffiti,gangs use their own form of graffiti to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities.

Controversies that surround graffiti continue to create disagreement amongst city officials, law enforcement, and writers who wish to display and appreciate work in public locations. There are many different types and styles of graffiti; it is a rapidly developing art form whose value is highly contested and reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.

reference:http://www.illustrationweb.us/artists/AndyCouncil/view

 

  

5.         Pop art

I like pop art because it showa vibrance of colours and is eye catching and visually compelling. Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. One of its aims is to use images of popular (as opposed to elitist) culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.

Pop art is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion of those ideas.^] Due to its utilization of found objects and images, it is similar to Dada. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of postmodern art themselves.

     

 REFERENCE:http://www.illustrationweb.us/artists/SilkeBachmann/view

 

PHOTOGRAPHY:

HIGH CONTRAST PHOTOGRAPHY

A high-contrast photograph purposefully includes strongly contrasting elements. In black-and-white photography, a high-contrast shot will have relatively few gray tones, but lots of strong blacks and whites. A high-contrast color photo might have bright, almost iridescent elements cast against deep, dark shadows, or a single red tree in a forest of green.

Reference:https://www.ormsdirect.co.za/blog/2015/02/20/high-contrast-black-white-wildlife-photography-laurent-baheux/

 

 

 

_.Double exposure

Double Exposure, or Multiple Exposure, is a photographic technique that combines 2 different images into a single image. The technique has been practiced for several years, and it became particularly famous recently, due to the fact that graphic editor like Photoshop can help to create the identical effect. I like double exposure photography because With double exposure technique, you can create certain effect like ghost image, mirror image, or simply merging a bright moon into the dark, lonely sky. The reason of using this technique varies, but they are surely created for same purposes – beauty and uniqueness.

Reference:https://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2013/11/photo-inspiration-20-best-double-exposure-portraits-ive-ever-seen/

  

 

_.Image manipulation

Photo manipulation involves transforming or altering a photograph using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results. Some photo manipulations are considered skillful artwork while others are frowned upon as unethical practices, especially when used to deceive the public, such as that used for political propaganda, or to make a product or person look better.
Depending on the application and intent, some photo manipulations are considered an art form because it involves the creation of unique images and in some instances, signature expressions of art by photographic artists. For example, Ansel Adams employed some of the more common manipulations using darkroom exposure techniques, such as burning (darkening) and dodging (lightening) a photograph. Other examples of photo manipulation include retouching photographs using ink or paint, airbrushing, double exposure, piecing photos or negatives together in the darkroom, scratching instant films, or through the use of software-based manipulation tools applied to digital images.

reference:http://webneel.com/webneel/blog/25-creative-photo-manipulation-works-done-photoshop-awesome-collection

 

_4.HDR ( High Dynamic Range)

High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI) is a high dynamic range (HDR) technique used in imaging and photography to reproduce a greater dynamic range of luminosity than is possible with standard digital imaging or photographic techniques. The aim is to present a similar range of luminance to that experienced through the human visual system. The human eye, through adaptation of the iris and other methods, adjusts constantly for the broad range of luminance present in the environment. The brain continuously interprets this information so that a viewer can see in a wide range of light conditions.

refernce:http://webneel.com/different-types-of-photography

_5.Portrait photography

Portrait photography or portraiture is photography of a person or group of people that captures the personality of a subject by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses. A portrait picture might be artistic, or it might be clinical, as part of a medical study. Frequently, portraits are commissioned for special occasions, such as weddings or school events. Portraits can serve many purposes, from usage on a personal Web site to display in the lobby of a business. Personally I like portrait photography because it captures the emotions of the character and highlights the deepest thoughts through expressions. Portrait photography not only captures the subject but the quality and texture of the character

refernce:http://webneel.com/portrait-photography-inspiration-tips-beginners