Avoiding the Male Gaze - Brogan Ryan
Cheltenham photographer Brogan Ryan
WOMEN’S sexuality in modern media is nearly always portrayed through the lens of the Male Gaze. Cheltenham-based photographer and archivist Brogan Ryan is a creative working to help turn this tide, portraying women as they hoped and intended to be.
In this month’s magazine feature she shares the process behind her art, the benefits of shooting with film and why collaboration is the key to more a representative portrayal of female sexuality.
When taking photographs of women, the frame of reference is impossibly large. Whether it is in advertising, fashion or erotica, it is hard not to be influenced by the omnipresence of women's bodies in photography over the last several decades. Most of these photos have been taken by men. The challenge I find in my photography, as a woman who shoots women, is how to present women in a way that does not simply mimic the Male Gaze.
Anna Ellis. Photograph by Brogan Ryan.
This is especially difficult when on the surface, what we are doing appears quite similar; taking photographs of women who are beautiful, sexy, alluring, attractive. Sometimes the photographs can even seem to accomplish the same ends creating a provocative or seductive image. The argument goes, that women who don't want to produce an imitation of the Male Gaze, should make women the subject of photographs, rather than the object.
This is easy to say, but it can prove more difficult in practice.
As I've developed my photography throughout the years, I've realised that the best way to do this is through collaboration. When I am shooting, the whole project, from the conceptual stages to the day of, is a two-way process. I want the model to have as much input as possible. Clothes, setting, vibe. The music we play when we're shooting. I don't want to impose my concept of what I want from a model. I want the model to be free to demonstrate their own creative expression. They are on one side of the camera and I am on the other – we don't interfere.
Maria Kn in Berlin. Photograph by Brogan Ryan.
While I enjoy coming up with elaborate concepts with the models I shoot, sometimes I find that shooting in the model’s natural environment – their home – helps capture their personality, adding an extra personal layer to the images. The photograph of Nicoline holding the hair spray can to her mouth is taken from a shoot I did with her and her friend Tiziana (they are the founders of Artizians Magazine) at her home in central London. The crushed velvet chaise longue and the extravagant silver chandelier that comes into the top of the frame is emblematic of Nicoline herself, who is by all definitions a playful, stylish, larger than life character. Nicoline travels a lot and carries this exuberance wherever she goes which I believe this photo demonstrates, contrasting the ordinariness of the street visible outside the window with the glamour of Nicoline’s interior world.
I like to shoot on a mixture of digital and film. If you want to really give up control when shooting, film can take it firmly out your hands. Without being able to examine your content in real time, you are forced to give in to the natural ebb and flow of the shoot. Often I find the best images this way. Film captures the little spontaneous moments that can get lost in the scroll of hundreds of digital images. And, of course, the warm colours and the grain are beautiful.
Maria Kn in Berlin. Photograph by Brogan Ryan.
In previous (pre-pandemic) years I have been lucky to travel frequently. Whenever I am abroad, I try to arrange a shoot with a local model. This is how I met the wonderful Maria Kn, who I have now collaborated with on a number of shoots. For our last shoot, we planned to create an ‘80s Summer’ vibe, shooting on film, and editing the images to look like they are part of a film reel. The decision to shoot film lent itself to this perfectly, capturing the Berlin sun in those muted but rich colours. We tried to evoke the nostalgic allure of summers gone by, which can be seen in the bottom photograph as Maria deadpans into the camera, warm but impossibly distant.
Hopefully, the end result is sexy, but not sexualised. Alluring, but empowering. Beautiful, but not something that has been made to gawk at. What differentiates the Female Gaze from the Male one is nuance. There is a detail to the women that is lost in the sexualised blur of the Male Gaze.
And I hope that that detail is evident in my photographs.
You can keep up to date with Brogan’s work on Instagram at @broganryanphoto.
