Camp it up!: camp in the portrait photography of Daniela Rossell and Pierre et Gilles

Title from first page of PDF file (viewed January 13, 2011)Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-110)Previous research on camp has attempted unsuccessfully to reach consensus on a definition of the term. After an extensive review of the scholarship that deals with sociological and etymological treatise on the topic, this thesis adheres to the definition of camp posited by Fabio Cleto: that camp is inherently performative by nature, and that camp's ultimate point lies in its ability to defy cohesive definitions. This paper sets a framework for the issues of camp through a consideration of the inherent performative relationship between the mode of camp and the medium of portrait photography. The preceding chapters examine two bodies of contemporary photographic portraits using camp as a lens to elucidate issues of gender performance, politics and imposed hierarchies of taste. In the chapter Ricas y famosas: Fetishizing the Body, the Object, and the photograph, this thesis posits that the work of Rossell can be viewed through multiple lenses depending on the perspective of the viewer. Historically, the work has been seen as a commentary on Mexican socio-political conditions. This chapter provides an alternative way of experiencing the work through the eye of a camp beholder. The intention of the work is at best ambiguous, much as camp remains an illusive mode of perception that is defined by a number of characteristics. These images of women can be understood as fetish objects, subjected to the male gaze, or as women who are taking pleasure in performing a camped-up version of the commodified feminine role. Pierre et Gilles' work is built on a series of polarities, and clandestine winks that mirror the constructions of camp as a signifier and private badge of gayness. A myriad of of tensions are produced in the portraits of Pierre et Gilles by placing the hyper-masculine, toned, athletic bodies of their male models amidst their constructed tableaus and ultra-feminine d??cor. Thus, their most favored use of incongruity, the masculine/feminine opposition, is depicted through subtle sartorial signs of femininity juxtaposed with virile masculinity. In addition, the drama and theatricality of their images are always undermined by their predilection for plastic d??cor and cheap/faux set designs. Daniela Rossell's Ricas y Famosas and Pierre et Gilles' portraits become the ideal vehicle with which to demonstrate camp's constant performative flux between a series of proposed binary oppositions, these photographs also illustrate camp's construction as "gay sensibility" (in Pierre et Gilles) and "pop-camp appropriation" (for Rossell). Though the varying intentions of these portraits can be disputed, because of the forms of expression chosen, these artists have, whether purposefully or inadvertently, created a camp byproduct