In this post I will be reflecting on my photo collage. The photos from the collage were taken from three fashion magazines marketed largely towards women. As I looked through each magazine I chose images that caught my eye or had powerful words. However, I did not particularly notice a pattern until I assembled the collage. As I added more and more images, I started to notice a central theme of women. I thought this was interesting, but not surprising considered the magazines I chose images from were largely meant for women.
Over the weekend, five classmates commented 3-5 patterns and a theme they observed in my collage. The most common patterns observed were fashion, fitness, women, and feminism. The most commonly observed themes ranged from fashion, female image, and beauty.
After reviewing the patterns and themes observed by my classmates, I observed my collage. Like my classmates, I also noticed patterns of fashion and women. I ultimately decided that the theme of my collage was the female image. I came to this conclusion because I found that I had a lot of interesting images that sent a powerful message based off of how women are portrayed in media.
Something that I thought was very interesting was the relationship between images and text I chose to use on the collage, and the placement of them on the collage. For example, there is one image that says “love the body you’re with” next to “an image of a woman with strong arms with the caption “get strong sexy arms.” These two statements totally contradict each other! This is made even more powerful when combined with an image of a woman with an imperfect body. How can a woman love the body she is given when she sees advertisements telling her how to change and improve a part of her body. This is made even more powerful considering the collage is comprised of images of women and images of products that are designed to make women beautiful. These products such as lipstick, eye shadow, perfume, and nail polish are designed to make imperfect women, perfect. If magazines are always trying to improve women, how can a woman believe that she is perfect the way she is?
I also noticed the poses women are photographed in. It seems somewhat stereotypical. Next to the words “we like girls who talk back” there is a photograph of a woman with purple hair. That quote made me wonder…who is “we?” I noticed for the most part, women were portrayed as happy or posed provocatively. I would also like to call attention to the image of the woman taking a selfie. Do we ever see men in magazines taking selfies? I just thought this was interesting. This was my Aha! moment. At first, I looked at the collage as a whole. Then, once I gathered my central theme, I started to notice little parts that each had a different message when grouped together. This connected to what we learned in class because it taught me to think and interpret my images more abstractedly. A picture of a woman is not just an image of a woman. Not every image we see is black and white. It can be interpreted in a different way every single time you look at it.
I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. I did not really come in contact with any problems. If I had more time, I would have added more images and perhaps used and even larger piece of paper.
Digital Communications 