Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze: Summary & Key Insights

To begin, we must understand the roots from which this current visual revolution grows. For over a century, photography was dominated by male perspectives—men depicting women as muses, subjects, and objects of beauty rather than autonomous beings. The male gaze, a concept articulated by film theorist Laura Mulvey in the 1970s, shaped not only cinema but also photography. Women became spectacles framed through desire, positioned as passive participants within a patriarchal visual economy.

Yet the story of women behind the camera isn’t absent—it’s often just untold. From early trailblazers like Julia Margaret Cameron to modernists like Cindy Sherman, women have used photography to question and undermine dominant representations. These female photographers didn’t simply flip the gaze; they reconstructed it. Their images of themselves and other women introduced new possibilities for intimacy, ambiguity, and strength.

The evolution from male gaze to female gaze, however, isn’t linear. It’s a dialogue, a contest of perspectives. The female gaze does not merely reverse objectification; it redefines what it means to look with care. In my conversations with artists featured in *Girl on Girl*, I witnessed this historical awareness carried forward as a conscious rebellion. They understand they’re part of a lineage that fought to occupy the space of visibility—and they continue that struggle with each image they create.

Representation is the battlefield where image and identity collide. In my research, I found an overwhelming number of women using self-portraiture as a radical act. The camera becomes their means to reclaim autonomy over how their bodies and emotions are depicted. Photographers like Juno Calypso or Petra Collins turn the lens inward, crafting fantastical, exaggerated, even unsettling images of womanhood that deliberately resist conventional prettiness. Through their art, they confront how women have been trained to perform for the camera—and then they disrupt that performance.

Self-representation in photography is not simply narcissism; it’s rebellion. The subjects of these portraits—sometimes the artists themselves—are composing their own mythologies, reframing vulnerability as agency. For these women, the act of photographing oneself is akin to rewriting history. It’s a method of saying: this is what being seen looks like when I decide the terms. There’s a profound intimacy in this reclaiming—an honesty that is political. When women control how they’re represented, they reclaim the power stolen from them by centuries of external observation.