Exchange: Maintaining Eye Contact: The Power of Met and Unmet Gazes in Photography

Maintaining Eye Contact: The Power of Met and Unmet Gazes in Photography

by Evelyn Plonsker

Photograph of a woman and man dancing in a nightclub, amidst a crowd of men dressed in tuxedos.

Garry Winogrand
Women are Beautiful
1964 – 1974
gelatin silver print | paper
Museum Purchase
1976/2.15

Garry Winogrand set out to create his most ambitious yet controversial photobook titled “Women Are Beautiful” during the height of the second-wave feminist movement in the 1970s. Published in 1975, this celebration of female independence and sexual liberation is complicated by Winogrand’s often objectifying vision of his female subjects through the lens of his camera. This photograph taken at a nightclub in New York City highlights the dichotomy between objectification and liberation through the fixated gaze by the man dancing on the left directed at the female subject’s breasts as she dances freely and gazes off camera. The three men in this image are not given the same objectifying treatment by fellow subjects or the camera, as it also focused on the woman’s breasts. Winogrand suspends this beautiful woman in the male gaze showcasing how even feminist liberation is framed within the structure of patriarchal power.

A group of prisoners in a room relaxing. Some look like they are watching television, others are talking and some are just sitting.

Danny Lyon
Day Room, from "Conversations with the Dead"
1968 – 2011
gelatin silver print | paper
Gift of Thomas Wilson '79 and Jill Garling '80
2014/2.359

Danny Lyon began his career as a politically impassioned photographer while still in undergrad, when he became the staff photographer for SNCC in 1962, an organization of the Civil Rights Movement. Lyon parted with SNCC in 1964 but used his experience gained creating powerful imagery for human rights to photograph the inhumane conditions of the Texas penitentiary system between 1967-68 in his 1971 collection, “Conversations with the Dead.” In this photograph, titled Day Room, the man seated on the right gazes up forlornly from his position on the floor, making eye contact with Lyon’s camera. This human connection between the subject and camera is severed by the metal bars between them that dominate the foreground of the photograph. The met gaze between camera and inmate works against the dehumanization of the prison system, exemplified by the identical white uniforms worn, and conjures a feeling of empathy in the viewer.

Elliott Erwitt
Bratsk, Siberia, from "Master Prints Volume I"
1967
gelatin silver print | paper
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon Sobel
1987/1.194.1

Born in Paris in 1928 to Russian Jewish parents, Elliott Erwitt was a documentary and commercial photographer known for creating photographs steeped in irony. In this photograph devoid of context other than the location given in the title, Erwitt has created an image brimming with heated emotions and a storyline that seems to exist beyond the frame. The bridal outfit worn by the female figure and suit worn by her partner set a dramatic scene, but it is their intense glares cast at the other male figure that give this image its theatrical quality. The juxtaposition of their death stares against the lighthearted smirk worn by the solitary man creates a storyline in this photograph that allows the viewer’s mind to run away with possibilities of what has transpired between them. Erwitt utilizes the medium of photography to capture a single moment that provides the essence of a greater story.

Square-format photograph depicting two abstract glass objects tilted towards each other. The shadows of these objects and that of an unseen man are visible on the wall in the background.

André Kertész
Two Statues' Shadows
1979
cibachrome print | paper
Gift of Dr. Seymour and Barbara K. Adelson
2009/2.13

In his 1979 series, From My Window, Andre Kertesz explores his grief surrounding the death of his wife through a series of still life photographs that emulate this loss. Two Statues’ Shadows pictures the glass figurines, designed to represent Kertész and his late wife Rebecca, with their heads bowed together in a recreation of an intimate moment shared between two lovers. The refracted light in the heads of both figurines gives the impression of a shared gaze between them. In the background of the photograph, Kertész casts a shadow in profile on the wall behind the figurines. The solemn downward gaze unmet by a partner highlights the solitariness of his reality. The two-dimensionality of his shadow in comparison to the three-dimensional statues demonstrates how Kertész cannot reach the plane of existence in which he and his wife are together anymore, relegated to the shadows.

A woman seen from behind walks away from the camera on a sidewalk. A shadow of a person falls onto the concrete just behind her.

Leonard Freed
Woman's legs with Freed's own shadow on the street, New York City, 1971
1971
gelatin silver print | paper
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James Agah, Class of 1989 (BBA)
2018/2.101

Born in 1929 to Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, Leonard Freed is known for his documentary photography and photojournalism work around the world. This 1971 photograph taken on the streets of New York City captures a nonreciprocal moment of interaction between Freed and the woman whose stocking-clad legs he has chosen to photograph from behind. While many street photographs are taken without the subject’s explicit permission, Freed’s decision to include his own shadow looming behind the subject in this photograph emphasizes his objectifying gaze of this woman as he captures them together without her knowledge. The purposefully unmet gaze pictured in this photograph gives it a voyeuristic quality and reinforces the omnipresent patriarchal power held over women even in the era of feminist liberation in the 1970s.

2 Comments

I think the way men and women interact (or don't) is fascinating in these photographs. It's interesting to look at these in a 21st century perspective — how often do we publicly see these types of photographs?
— by Ava Victoria Seaman (December 6 2022 @ 5:07 pm)

It is really interesting and powerful how eye contact from subjects to the photographer and to other subjects show objectification and enhance the story of the image.
— by Charles Henry Gertner (December 13 2022 @ 9:51 pm)