Jessica Yatrofsky: I Heart Girl
For where is any
author in the world. Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?
[Shakespeare, Loves Labour Lost, Act IV, scene 3]
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and while there
is evidence that perceptions of beauty are evolutionarily determined, that
humans might be attracted to mates that are likely to offer them enhanced
chances of survival, the experience of beauty nevertheless remains subjective.
In her first monograph, I Heart Boy, which launched her
career in 2010, photographer Jessica Yatrofsky laid bare what some have
referred to as the ‘gay’ ideal of male beauty, stripped down to the essence,
with hairless bodies and a youthful androgyny, reflected in her choice of the
word ‘boy’ not ‘man’. In her latest counterpart, I Heart Girl, she turns to
female beauty. Across 96 pages, she lays out photographs of naked – and near
naked – young women, all of whom, in some way or other, are beautiful, all of
whom are sexy and innocently alluring. None conforms to the classical
definition of symmetry and aesthetic perfection, many almost boyish with their
slender figures, but each allows her inner beauty to shine through. As George
Pitts notes in the introduction, femininity is teased out of androgyny, with each
subject’s self-awareness and quiet confidence – true characteristics of
survival – capturing the essence of this ‘fairer’ sex.
Jessica Yatrofsky
I Heart Girl
Published by powerHouse Books
May 2015
Portraits / Fine Art Photography / Feminism
Hardcover, 8.5 x 10.5 inches, 96 pages
ISBN: 978-1-57687-739-5
$30.00 US/CAN
http://www.powerhousebooks.com/site/wp-content/uploads/IHeartGirlPreview1.pdf
To see this photo spread in full, please buy the May 2015 print issue of DIVA magazine