vulva project
what is it?
a series of photos of vulvas, printed in cyanotype and edged with gold.
whose vulvas?
anyone’s! everyone’s! yours if you want!
why vulvas?
because half the world has a vulva and they’re still surrounded in shame and misinformation and embarrasment and for two thousand years they weren’t seen in art and that’s bad.
why cyanotype and gold?
because when it was first invented cyanotype, a relatively easy and accessible and inexpensive photographic process, was dismissed by gatekeeping “serious” (read: male) photographers as being “just” for women and poor people. and because gold, in medieval art, was used to denote divinity. so the idea is that this part of the body, so shrouded in shame and stigma, and printed using a beautiful-but-neglected technique, is seen as sacred.
can i be a part of it?
yes! everyone with a vulva is welcome! seriously, everyone. whoever you are, if you want to be involved please reach out. and spread the word! tell your friends, tell your parents, tell your grandparents!
what if my vulva was surgically constructed?
then you should definitely be part of this project.
should i shave/wax?
if you want! but don’t do it because you think you need to for the project — you don’t. come as you are, there’s no right or wrong answer.
what if i’m on my period?
up to you! if you want to reschedule that’s totally fine; but also blood or tampon strings can be incorporated into the photos in a really cool way!
why aren’t you doing a penis project? are you just a perv who wants to look at pussies?
i might do a penis project someday! i’m not right now because there are already plenty of dicks in art. the point of this is to shift the double standard of depictions of human genitals.
are the shoots remote or in person?
whatever you want. on the one hand anything shot remotely will be lower resolution and give us less latitude to crop and maintain image quality for printing; on the other hand if it’s in person bear in mind that i’ll be very close to you and sticking a camera between your legs. it’s totally your call, based both on your location and your comfort.
how do i become a part of it?
email me or DM me on ig.
forrestleophotos@gmail.com, @forrestleophotos
does it cost anything?
nope, all shoots for this project are free.
will i get paid?
not in cash money, but in exchange for your participation you get a free photoshoot of anything you want.
is it anonymous?
yep. this is just going to be a close-up shot of your vulva. no faces and no names.
i don’t know if i want to be part of this but i’m interested in everything you’re talking about. do you have any reading recommendations?
you bet i do.
liv strömquist’s fruit of knowledge: the vulva vs the patriarchy is an amazing graphic essay that should be required reading for everyone.
catherine blackledge’s raising the skirt: the unsung power of the vagina is the og classic and an incredible feat of deep and creative scholarship
and this article by syreeta mcfadden is a short and sweet look at how bizarrely lacking western art is in vulval representaion.
can you talk more about where this whole idea came from?
why yes, yes i can.
“pudendum,” the non-scary, science-y term for female-presenting external genitalia, comes from a latin word that means “to be ashamed.” (in 2019 it was, finally, dropped from official medical terminology, though its adjectival cousin “pudendal,” as in the pudendal nerve, was not.)
for tens of thousands of years western art was full of vulvas. then, abruptly, it wasn’t. there were still plenty of dicks — a plethora of dicks, really, from comically gargantuan hogs that had to be carted around in wheelbarrows to boners that grew on the trees of medieval marginalia to david’s cute lil peanut — but from ancient greece through the renaissance right up to gustave courbet’s cause célèbre of 1866 women were smooth-crotched barbie dolls.
in 1972 when nasa’s pioneer 10 probe was getting ready to go explore the cosmos a plaque was designed to let passing extraterrestrials know where it came from. the plaque bore a diagram of our solar system, a schematic representation of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen, and two naked humans. one, waving at the stars, has a cock and balls on proud display. the other, hands demurely at its sides, is a smooth-crotched barbie doll.
the original drawing had a small line to represent a vulva, but it was deemed “pornographic” and removed. part of the justification for its removal was that ancient greek statues have no labia.
john ruskin, one of the most celebrated art critics of victorian england, refused to consummate his marriage because — as effie gray later recounted — ”he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening.” it is now generally believed that he was revolted at the fact that his bride had pubic hair, or perhaps labia — something for which none of the thousands of naked women in western classical art had prepared him.
i have a questionnaire on my website for people interested in booking a shoot with me. it’s meant to give both me and them a better sense of what they’re hoping for from their photos. one of the questions asks if there are any parts of their bodies they would prefer aren’t in the photos. the answer i’ve gotten exponentially more than any other is, though terminology varies, “my vulva.”
this project is meant to change that.
