This is your world

http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/04/this-is-your-world-at-carte-blanche.html

I find myself challenged looking at this exhibition on Lenscratch. The idea for the exhibit is based off of lyrics from an Emilie Simon song, which talks about the relationship between a young woman and the world around her. The images themselves seem very straight forward, nothing is very overt or grotesque or overly sexual about them, but there is still something that I feel like I am missing to connect when I look at them. And I think it's because I am lacking something that the photos themselves contain, womanhood. It seems strange that something like this could be challenging, but at the same time it almost creates a longing inside, for a man, to be able to connect with women in this realm, a place where we are seldom allowed to visit. And it is not that it is women in the photographs necessarily that does this, but how they are shot with a certain softness to them, the look on the women's and girl's faces. I'm sure most men who have dated some women can remember times when their girlfriend or even just female friend tells you that they are going to have a girl's night out or whatever it may be, and I'm sure that you were always curious as to what went on at these times, what it was that we weren't allowed to see or experience. There is a sort of lonely sensuality that comes to these photos, they touch places deep inside and move me, but I don't know if I can place exactly where it is that's being moved. Saya Chontang, Deborah Parkin, and Aela Labbe all give me the same sort of uncomfortable twinge, like I'm seeing something that I'm never allowed to see. The reason that I don't include Julie Cerise is that her photos seem more to talk about moments of experience that women encounter, not the female interior or community of emotion, but I point in time or experience. In particular Saya Chontang's photos, I know that these aren't women simply posing to try and look attractive or sexy for a man, but they still have that womanly sensuality to them that is so foreign to most men. Maybe we feel it at times, and maybe it is being able to see these moments and experience this feeling in these photographs that can help us understand you (addressing the collectivity of women), but it moves a part of me that doesn't get budged often, which is why I think I am so drawn to it.