About (re)Genesis: Let Us Make Man in Our Image
Good can only happen if we are able to see ourselves in others and others in ourselves.
That is my core belief and the motivation for my artistic practice. I make art to instigate conversations that prompt us to understand something new about each other.
For the last few years, I’ve been photographing my husband, Nati, in the nude. I started doing this because I like looking at Nati’s body, but also because I could not find any iconic female photographers who used their male partners as muses, and I wanted to fill in the gap.
Through this work and the reactions it generates, I’ve come to realize that even now, when the female gaze is claiming a much larger share of the artistic gaze overall, it is rarely directed at nude male bodies. I think men, especially the straight white men who have dominated production and acquisition of Western art, have successfully trained us to avert our eyes from what makes them feel uncomfortable, or vulnerable.
In “(re)Gegenesis: Let Us Make Man in Our Image” that vulnerability is embodied, literally and symbolically, by my naked husband.
The phrase “Let us make man in our image” comes from the Bible, Genesis 1:26. It’s a male God talking about how he will create a male human to look like him. I’ve chosen this phrase as my title because my work is about interrogating all of the assumptions in that phrase: who is us, what are we making, who is in our image, what constitutes an image, and whose permission do we need to make it.