Mendietas Gender Examinations and Her Place as a Woman and as an Artist - Case Study Example

Ana Mendieta, a Cuban American artist most famous for her performance art and earth-body sculptures, documents through photography her more memorable art such as the series of performances from 1972, the “Facial Hair Transplants.” In these performances, a male student, Morty Sklar, shaves his beard and mustache while Mendieta applies the pieces of hair to her face. Through these satirical transferals of hair to her own face, she in effect assumes the symbols of male power. In one of the portraits, “bearded,” she reveals herself as an earnest Amish farmer.

In another photograph, she is outfitted with a curled mustache complete with gold hoop earrings, so she appears as a mischievous, devilish pirate. What these photographs show are Mendieta’s gender examinations as she strives to find her place as a woman and as an artist. As contemporary photographers continue their ongoing dialogue of the difference between photographs as documents and photographs as pictures, I believe that Mendieta’s photographs can be defined as a document and as a picture both.

A document is defined as a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity and usually the intent to communicate. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information. A picture is defined as a two-dimensional artifact that captures a similar image. Given that the original presentation of Mendieta’s piece was a performance and then captured via photograph, her “faces” can be considered as the physical representation of the information Mendieta’s is trying to capture, that she is able to assume the symbols of male power as she tries to understand her place in the art world.

This “document” symbolizes gender examination and portrays to the viewer the struggle of woman in a man’s world through a humorous approach. Her photographs are pictures that capture reality, capture images that currently do not exist and probably will not exist. The purpose of a picture is to show a viewer true life that can never be seen in its true form ever again, which Mendieta captures in her pictures. Furthermore pictures are especially valuable when the art is moving and its life span is limited.

The significance between documents and pictures in photographic history is that traditionally there a documentary photographs i.e. photojournalism and pictures emulating history, but not necessarily reality. In documentary photographs, the objective is to produce objective, truthful, and candid photographs that are usually used for project purposes, publication, or public forum. Pictures, historically, are subjective, they have the artists intention behind them, pictures have a message from the artist that needs to be told through stretching, altering, and skewing the objects, people, and landscapes before them.

Documents offer an objective reality whereas pictures offer an explanation for reality. The reasoning being choosing Ana Mendieta’s piece of work “Facial Hair Transplants,” is because it offers a chance for reality to be captured in a picture, where the truth is not stretched, where a candid moment of humor, satire, and the difference between men and women are demonstrated.