These Photographs Are The Opposite Of The Male Gaze

Does the world need another 'girl-rolling-around-in-white-bedsheets-with-very-little-on' editorial? The answer is probably no. From Instagram, to American Apparel, to the Kardashians, the female body has never been a more valued conduit for commercial profit than in 2015. Whether we're being latently sold waist-training corsets, sneakers, or energy drinks, the female silhouette has always been then most powerful marketing tool on the planet.

Instagram has become its own talent agency, girls their own model bookers, and we're daily inundated with carefully curated images of women in demeaning situations. Often we don't have the time to stop and ask 'why?' And so, we're numbed to the photographs of girls, vulnerably splayed out on bedsheets, half-naked on bedroom floors and contorted in sexually suggestive poses that are more often than not shot and directed by men, Terry Richardson being the most flagrant example.

Keziah Porter is here to redress the balance. Her stark images that flip these fashion-photography tropes upside their head are simple and powerful reminders of how flippantly photographers shoot the female form in a state of undress.

In her series, Porter has supplanted the token half-nude girl-model, with a male one. It sounds simple. It is. It's also incredibly impactful. The images are soft, naive, feminine and rather haunting. Porter explains, "I wanted to be in the position of the puppeteer - photographing men in a confrontational way." Her aim is to reveal male vulnerability in a world where "imagery of female exploitation is just too common." It's hard to argue with that.