Laureen Griffin

The Gender Portraiture Project is inspired by my need to participate in conversations about gender structuring and reflections on being femele. I personally identify as gender queer, although this is a very recent development. The reason being - I never realized there was a term to describe the way I feel and the way I am often treated, misunderstood, and stereotyped (usually misjudged) because people don’t know how to categorize me. I guess gender queer is the closest resemblence to my personality although, I am not certain I even want to fit into a category.

Gender portraits will be publicly presented as fine art. I am interesting in including stories as text in book form or as audio as well as the visual portrait. The stories will not be linked to the image nor to the individual. My motives are to get us out there - to be seen - to be recognized as dignified humin beings - to be familiar. More about public exhibition later….

When I work with an individual to visually construct a gender persona, we talk about personal identity. Often examples are given of times when a connection is made in a positive and meaningful way when we are recognized by those who are more inimately familiar with us. Other times we were scorned, or mistreated. The goal is to find and share personal expression; to leave a place of self condemnation and enter celebration and dignity. I offer a safe non-judgemental environment to explore personal identity and ideas. The next step is to develop a costume or outfit and think about props that may give further context to a scenario and/or identity. The mood of each portrait may vary depending on each individual - they can be comic, ironic, celebratory, beautiful, happy and more…. Although we may talk about times of suffereing the visual portrait tends to be on a positive note.

During our initial conversation, the individual may explore body image rather than a decorated or costumed image. For this reason I have developed a new series titled the Gender Body.

The photography studio will open for initial inquiries and individual meetings beginning Sept. 17th at 4013 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, PA. I will be on location Tuesdays and Thursdays 1-5PM and by appointment. If you are interested, please contact me by email. To view examples of select portraits view Gender Portraits and Gender Bodies.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Laureen

I keep searching for ways to describe the Gender Portraiture Project…today I decided to begin here. I’m fairly new to the blog thing, so I don’t readily think of this as a place to practice - this too will change….

My ideas for the project keep reorganizing themselves - I don’t necessarily change my mind, I just reprioritize.

Essentially, I am collecting stories, confessions, personas, looking at personal identity through portrait photography and language. Please see Project Basics for more details.

Today, most importantly, is showing dignity through portraiture and text or sound bites. How do we project ourselves into society? Do we change by circumstance or are we so well integrated, there is no need to be camelian like. Increasing exposure for gender minorities in a world of profiling, seems to be essential to our survival as a species. Simply eliminating one’s identity is not an option. Creating an intercultural dialogue for women is especially important since this is my life. Every time I meet a woman we talk about how we were raised depending on class and country of family origin. Family expecations are huge. Then societal pressures in family, education, job/career, peers, lovers, everyday public interaction while shopping and walking down the street - from those people we have never met, who judge us on first impression. I can not always tell what these impressions are based on - could be mannerism, dress, hairstyle, posture, speech…and so on and so forth….

This year, I started a new project: taking portrait photos of people suited up in their chosen gender personas. As it turns out, people have been exploring more than one gender - masculine, feminine, androgyne, and so on. It’s strange how we relate to stories of gender persecution, depending on hair length, skirt or pants, gesture, body type… while having a blast being ourselves, dressing up, and taking photos. It’s too bad we are so harassed by society. I am located in Philadelphia and am looking for more people to photograph. If you are willing to suit up and have your photo taken, please send me an email. You can bring your own outfit or work with me to make an original costume.

This one-minute Public Service Announcement (PSA) is devoted to raising awareness of the human cost of the July-August 2006 Israel-Lebanon War. Speak Out! For more information see: www.electroniclebanon.net www.dailystar.com.lb www.adc.org Produced by: Laureen Griffin, Hazami Sayed, and Kate Zaidan [Medium Quality File]. This PSA is part of “No Time to Waste: The 48-hour PSA Project Confronting War,” held in Philadelphia, PA.

To see video go to http://blip.tv/file/72394

This video began at Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. It was my first time at the festival and I was blown away by the incredible array of womyn’s bodies! I have never had an experience like this before or anywhere else…so I decided to conduct breast interviews as inspired by Clarity Haynes’ work. Busting Out was in it’s conceptual stages and the interviews were a huge catalyst.

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I set certain parameters for this piece; that it be in a medium new to me, that it be in and of this workshop, with the workshop’s participants being integral to its formation, lending their voices both physically and figuratively. I also challenged myself to be self-referential. These pieces are a personal documentation of process and dialogue, a means not necessarily an end.

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The initial workshop the inspired my gender based art can be found at my old website - Modern Iconography

The first place I visited when I moved to Philly was the Eastern State Penitentiary Museum. At Cranbrook Academy of Art one of the visiting artists had talked about its revitalization - how artists had used the old cells for installations. I was really into this. As it turns out the tour I got was more interesting than the art - our guide told us of the panopticon design by the Quakers and the bibliotherapy - the only book they were aloud to read was the Bible. Sound familiar? All I could think about with rage was STANDARDIZATION. How, in the USA, home of the free - we are forced to standardize…

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During the winter of 1998, I lived in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia. I woke up one morning and was struck by the rainy light of the day - so I took a walk on the old train tracks leading from the loading dock of the Inquirer. I could not stop thinking about my grandmother and her love of nature - her stories of running through the meadows of the Vermont country side in starck contrast to my Nature Walk. I read Sara Teasdale’s poem Places - a poem I’m sure Mommom can relate to.

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Consumer was my MFA thesis piece exhibited in the Cranbrook Art Museum the spring of 1996.

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