Photomontage Series:
In the Style of Martha Rosler
For this series, I chose Martha Rosler and her Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain photomontage series. Through photomontage of popular media, such as advertising and magazines, Rosler upends the messages of the fantasies and expectations blaring at women in daily, unavoidable media consumption. She appropriates media to either point out the commodification and consumption of women’s bodies and identity or change the message of male-oriented media sources in favor of female liberation or defiance.
I wanted to focus on Martha, what bothered her, and how that translates to 2022. Advertising has gone digital, it’s more personal, and metastasized into subtle, constant messages through social media. Social media presence is niche and has so many different algorithms perfectly designed to remind you who you should be, how you should act, and how you should look. There is a rise in effortlessness, casualness, and vulnerability on social media that is perfectly packaged and delivered by users to each other. You’re supposed to be simultaneously real and vulnerable while being perfect and glamorous - perfectly imperfect with a perfectly curated feed of ‘casually’ taken photos of that random corner of your room that happens to have perfect lighting and a picture perfect composition. The standard is impossible to achieve, and the balance between authenticity and perfection only causes frustration.
I texted my friends and asked them for their thoughts on social media pressures and how this juxtaposition of being perfectly imperfect on social media affects them as individuals. Each of these pieces reflects the personalized pressures each of them feel, and how they manifest in their daily life, modeled by them.
“Sometimes I think I’m so good at the pretending I don’t know who I would be if I didn’t have to be a different person for everyone. How can you know who you are when there are a million people on the internet telling you who you should be?”
Elizabeth
“I look down at my own body once more, critiquing every inch of it: my skinny legs, covered in tiny black fuzz, my thick stomach that turns into rolls when i move or sit, my broad shoulders and growing arms. other days i look down at my body and view all these parts completely different, loving them and thanking them. but today, comparing myself to these “natural” and “authentic” people whom i don’t know on instagram, i ask myself, “well whats the hope for me? if this is their raw selves, and they still look this good? where do i, or could i, ever stand?”
Claire
“But when I’m in the water, I feel weightless. The waves move my body effortlessly and I feel free from the eyes and the ‘likes.’”
