The Y Campaign
The world of fashion and advertising is a fast paced, intoxicating, and exciting field. While it likes to stay fresh there are a few consistent trends. The most obvious is that it is a male dominated industry. While the production, make-up, hair, and styling is done by both sexes, the photography end is very male subjugated. The men have the freedom to shoot and sexualize to their liking. Ergo, straight men sexualize women and homosexual men sexualize men. That being said, women tend to be the main focus of objectification. When there is a female fashion photographer, she is expected to “keep it pretty and feminine,” typically only shooting women. When sexualizing does occur it tends to be women sexualizing themselves or other women. Even the most famous, or really only house hold female fashion photographer name, Annie Leibovitz, is a lesbian. This leaves very little voice for the straight female in the fashion world.
And such, the Y Campaign was born. The Y Campaign is a collection of images of erect penises photographed as if they are product, incorporating common features like bright crisp lighting, colorful backgrounds, splashing water, and bottom reflections, which are often seen in advertising photography. Each image is shot to look like a billboard and is printed to that size to solidify the concept. This is Robert Mapplethorpe meets Jill Greenberg meets fashion ad campaign, in an enticing set of images that will have people talking about what objectification and sexuality really means in advertising, and how the orientation of the person behind the lens effects the image and the story being conveyed.
It should be noted that I am not, in fact, anti objectification, but rather feel that it can be a very positive thing coming from the right person in the right way. Both men and women like to be desired after all.