Questions
Each of my interviews began with one of the following questions:
"What does womanhood mean to you?"
"How would you describe the female experience?"
"What is it like to be a woman?"
Based on the interviewee's response, I would direct further questions towards a specific experience. For example, if someone described their experience by talking about their community, I would ask what experiences shaped their community. From here I would generally try to narrow down the conversation to a specific feeling or experience. My goal ultimately was to get a one-word answer to one of the questions listed above, but since this was a rather difficult question to put on someone, I tried to narrow down the discussion first to make it easier.
Artistic Decisions
Each photo in this anthology is in black and white. While the photos were not originally all black and white, I felt that the monochromatic tone added a layer of depth to the portfolio. While this choice may at first seem contradictory - after all what did I discover but the diversity of the female experience - I find that monochrome photos draw additional attention to the lighting of the subject. There was a small dichotomy between positive and negative responses from the women I interviewed, and the focus on light allowed me to explore this aspect more deeply. Overall, this choice was in the name of accuracy rather than consistency.
A main focus of this project was on selective subject variety. Variety, because some words could be better captured through an item or location, whereas others were better seen through a person or event. The selective aspect manifested itself in my human subjects, who were all female. While there are some possible responses which would be best portrayed with either a male subject or both female and male subjects, none of the responses I got were better suited through these subjects.
Other Considerations
I interviewed women and girls of all ages - from 9 to 82 - and so my interview process looked different based on who I was interviewing. I wanted to include different perspectives, and so my manner of questioning adapted to best encapsulate the experience of different people.
I wanted to protect the privacy of the interviewees, so I kept the response almost anonymous by only including the initials and age attached to the one-word response. Not only was anonymity respectful towards the women I interviewed, but it also expanded my relatively small project: it is easy to imagine any woman responding with one of these words, not just the few that I interviewed.
After debating whether to include edited transcripts of the interviews along with the photos, I decided not to in this project. If I were to create an exhibition, I would consider adding a multimedia element by recording the interviews and having them play over speakers in the exhibition. Overall for this project, I valued the simplicity of having only one word which described each photo. In my mind, this allows each experience to be extrapolated and would allow more people to relate.
Along with interviewing women of all ages, I also attempted to include a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, such as those of trans women, and women who immigrated from other countries.