The Female Body Photographed by Female Artists

Abstract

This paper presents part of the results of a semiotic investigation on the representation of the body in photography, created between 2010 and 2020 by Latin American female artists. The objectives of the research are to understand and model how female corporeity is configured in the digital photography of creators who, specifically, use virtual media to disseminate their own works. The qualitative-interpretive research method was aimed at the study of cases that correlates the photographer, photography, and digital media. The analytical procedure was carried out with visual semiotics, which addresses the figurative and narrative elements of the images and emphasizes the enunciative practices in sociocultural environments of exchange of significant objects. The results of the study of each selected and constituent image of the investigated sample led to the construction of a grounded theory that encompasses the convergences of elaboration and dissemination of the photographs of the sample. This paper presents the results of such a procedure, carried out with some of those images, without a title, which is part of the photographic series prepared by Victoria Razo on the women's marches on March 8, 2020, in Mexico City. The semiotic analysis conducted provides resources for understanding visual enunciative practices in scenarios of social demands and allows drawing some conclusions about the iconography, with attributes of documentary and artistic making, of the female body-subject, while the creators use digital media for artistic exhibition and to encourage the observer's understanding of the deeds of demands for women's rights.