The Things I Touch

Luna Kolberg

Who am I? The one question that leaves us searching for an answer our hole lives. 

The human identity is a constantly changing construct, defined and shaped by everything we come in contact with throughout our lives. Gender being a huge part of that given identity, my search for my own is guided by the question: what does it mean do be a woman in our society? A society that is build on a heteronormative and patriarchal collective memory, the male gaze being one of its` most influential patterns, we still encounter today. As a woman I am constantly exposed to a perspective in the media, that is objectifying bodies, creating unrealistic beauty standards and therefore reinforcing social gender differences, resulting in an internalized misogyny. When the male gaze is omnipresent, how do we define the opposite - a female gaze? Is it possible to shape and enforce it through self portraiture? 

Pictures of bodies in our media and in real life, are the mirrors we choose to search in for ourselves. What is important to consider is, that one picture would always fail to capture one’s hole identity. Photography can only work as a way of deconstructing and reconstructing this identity. It can be used as a tool to change perspectives, narratives and therefore hole stories. 

„The Things I Touch“ is a series breaking down my identity, in hope to deconstruct my internalized male gaze through self portraiture, enforcing and shaping a female gaze. A photo series that deals with the relationships, the people and the places that touch me as well as I touch them. As humans, we grasp the world with our hands. They are our first point of contact with everything that surrounds us. In them, we hold the hands of the people who are important to us, we grasp the handles that open doors to new and old places, we touch ourselves. Of course, my hands play a major role in the question, asking about my identity, for it is one of the things, that distinguishes me from other people and defines who I am, but certainly not the only.