I'm Ready for My Close-up: Photography, Play and the Feminist Fitting-room

Orcutt, Lizzy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-1781-4549 and Ripley, Julie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4963-9977 (2025) I'm Ready for My Close-up: Photography, Play and the Feminist Fitting-room. In: APHE Conference: The Art of Play The Power of Risk Framing Photographic Education, 9th - 11th September 2025, Falmouth University. (Submitted)

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Abstract / Summary

This presentation explores the transformative potential of photography as a playful and empowering tool within feminist practice theory and visual self-exploration. Drawing from a collaborative workshop series, participants were invited to dress in bold, catwalk-inspired clothing and take control of their image-making process. Using photography not only as documentation but also as a site of agency, participants engaged in performative self-presentation, experiencing themselves visually in new and transformative ways.

At the heart of this project is the ‘Feminist Fitting-room’ (Orcutt 2022), a physical and metaphorical space where versions of the self are playfully “tried on” through dress and photographic exploration. Orcutt’s concept of visual selfhood, centred on the experience of looking rather than likeness, frames the photographic encounter as a site of intrasubjective reflection (Barad 2007). Ripley’s ‘ethnographic field photo-elicitation’ method (2018) enabled participants to reflect on their photograph in the moment, generating rich insights into agency, identity, and visibility.

Positioned at the intersection of photographic practice (Doy 2007, Frosch 2015, Walker 2013), feminist theory (Braidotti 2012, Cixous 200 [1976]), Irigaray 1985, Kristeva 1987) and playfulness (Winnicott 2005 [1971]), this work foregrounds photography as both a medium and a method: a vehicle for risk, reinvention, self-discovery and learning. The authors argue for the importance of creative visual exploration in photographic education, particularly in supporting diverse identities in the discovery of image and voice.

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