When talking about the body people often think about flat abs, muscles, and the sex appeal that is usually nowadays associated with the body. It is seen as a beautiful form or as something that can be perfected and worked on until it matches the expectations of society. In contrast, the body is also very commonly used to show the problems of the human body in our society such as obesity. Thus, in photography, the body is almost always somehow related to the idea of desire or disgust.
Although every part of the body has been photographed over and over again, I feel that feet are not a very common subject. I decided to photograph feet because they are not a part of the body that I, and many people for that matter, particularly like. I actually find feet rather repulsive. Because of this, I wanted to photograph feet in a way that would show them in a pleasing way so that they are not, at least in my eyes, a representation of disgust. I also wanted to show that even just by looking a photograph of a person’s feet you can tell something about that person. Feet can show a little of a person’s identity even though they are not a super defining part of the body. For example, I have a picture of a girl during a modern dance class. She is not doing an extravagant dance move but you can guess that she is a dancer and therefore know a little bit about her life.
My inspiration for this project was our discussion of photographers like Orlan and Corrine Day who were photographing the body in a grotesque way. The images we looked at in class showed the more disgusting aspects of the human body and the distorted views of what people think is beautiful and how far they are willing to go to make themselves look a certain way. With this project I wanted to show the opposite. I do think is very interesting to see the body in a grotesque way but I wanted to take a part of the body that, to me, is not so desirable and try and capture it in a natural way that would make it more appealing.
With this project I wanted to show feet, a part of the body not often associated with beauty or desire, in a way that would make them seen as a natural, and beautiful part of the body. This project goes along with the properties of desire versus disgust and also a little with identity because feet are a part of us that are not usually noticed that can say something about who we are.
