Yushi Li, Molly Matalon, Laura Stevens: 3 female photographers who expose the man
1. Yushi Li: From Child Man to Ornamental Man
Come and sit beside me as I write of loveYour love always spurs my words to paperThe quill is dipped and your eye… https://t.co/gdhIyMiYLT
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Yushi Li's Tinder dates are like no other. When the 30-year-old photographer, based in London, plans a meeting with a man, it is to invite him to pose in front of his camera... in the simplest camera. Out of more than 300 men contacted by the artist on the application, around fifteen finally agreed to take part in the exercise, namely to have their photos taken naked and without compensation – the vast majority having asked for sexual favors from the photographer in exchange for playing the model. A young heterosexual woman of Chinese origin, Yushi Li only contacts Western-looking men for this project, affirming her particular attraction for this type of physique while overturning the trivialization of the fetishization of Asian women. The artist then stages her models in their own kitchen and at the same time examines herself, as a desiring subject. In the series entitled Your Reservation is Confirmed, she poses for example alongside her male models like the Chinese photographer Pixy Liao, who also immortalized herself with her naked spouse in order to overthrow gender stereotypes. For his part, Yushi Li shows himself in his shots in a playful and comic light, playing jump rope or modeling clay with completely naked men, far from the representations of strength and virility generally associated with masculinity. Far from seeking perfection in her models or her compositions, the young Londoner rather sees photography as a game and mixes her serious and disillusioned air with the frivolity of the poses and activities represented. This sweet mixture of desire and derision shines through again in his latest series, The Feast, which takes up the codes of classical painting featuring female nudes (from Ingres to Cézanne) by reversing the roles in a parodic way. In this series, nudity is thus reserved for men, who appear as ornaments alongside the two female models who are dressed.
