In 1971 Araki Nobuyoshi self-published his famous work "Sentimental Journey" ("センチメンタルな旅") about newlywed travel. In 1986 Nan Goldin published her book "A Journey of Sentimental Journey" ("セン チメンタルな旅"). After "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency," Ryan McGinley released his first book of photographs, "The Kids Were Alright", in an exhibition in Manhattan in 2002, which was a huge success and gained celebrity attention. Since then, "private photography" has been a popular route for photographers to become artists. In "Private Photography", the artists photograph the body obsessively. "The body is the original cradle of all meaning" (Husserl)". Chinese artists such as Ai Mi, No. 223 (Lin Zhipeng), Ren Hang, Chen Zhe, Luo Yang and others have emerged one after another, depicting the human body in their photographs in playful and new ways.
Since 1990, 80% to 90% of art uses the body as an object. Even if the body is not displayed, the body of the creative artist is used for artistic performance. They are both the subject and the object of their own work 1. As a female photographer, there is a strong reflection on feminism in the photographs created by Sick Girl. The images are of free bodies, bodies tormented by some kind of invisible emotion. Some closeups of female body parts are juxtaposed with a series of objects that are poignant and cold. These photographs are in the camera.
Women are both the perpetrators of violence, as well as the sufferers and the injured. Beauty is destroyed for the human eye in the form of self-mutilation, provoking the visual pain of the viewer. Through the weapon of the weak - self-mutilation - it pierces the eyes of all peepers, blasphemers, and gawkers. The female body is trapped indoors, outdoors, in the "circular prison" of a male power system from which there is no escape, while the body is hesitant and unsure of its control over the power system, unable to resist outwardly. Instead, more self-mutilation is used to reveal the powerlessness and submissiveness of being trapped in the power 2. It seems that recognizing, challenging, and overturning this repressive set of ideas, systems, and social power mechanisms will take a long process of hard work.
The concept of the body has also been a central object of feminist analysis of gender oppression. In the mass media of male desire and female self-gender construction, the female body is used as a practice of discipline that can be identified with the female body in terms of posture and appearance (e.g., “slimming discipline," "beauty discipline," "skin care discipline," for example) the perpetrators of these disciplines are hidden behind the scenes and are nowhere to be found. Is the body of silence and powerlessness? Or is it a body of reflection and "resistance"?
There is always a deep reflection on the female body through Sick Girl`s images. Even if it is just a question, there is no definitive answer, the answer is left to the viewer's perception and vision of the body as male or female
Artists: Sick Girl