Embodied Narratives: Nude Portraits, Speaking Subjects and the Patriarchal Unconscious in Frank Cordelle's The Century Project

Abstract

<p><em>The Century Project</em>, both art exhibit and book, consists of unconventional nude portraits of over one hundred girls and women from the moment of birth to old age. Accompanying each photograph is the subject's written statement detailing instances of abuse, violence, grief, or reflecting moments of humour and joy. In the following pages I endeavor to understand the affect of such an exhibit by engaging the multiple and sometimes contradictory aesthetics exhibited by each photograph. Having both posed and volunteered for <em>The Century Project</em>, I mix personal engagement with critical theory, as difficult as it sometimes is to distinguish where one form of engagement ends and the other begins. I understand the bodily expression of both subject and viewer as an active, generative force: potentially both creative and uncooperative in response to authority and discipline. Engaging theories of embodiment, photography and psychoanalysis, I situate <em>The Century Project</em> in its various contexts: a corrective to iconic feminine beauty, a model for relational identity, and an expression of unconscious ideologies.</p>