Women Without Men is an exploration of women experiencing life, just a moment of it, without the male gaze.

I was thinking about Degas' women and how Degas tried to capture the female experience (washing, dancing, working)  in a mimicry of voyeurism. He’s looking at these unnamed women without their noticing, or so we are led to believe. They are models. They are aware of him painting them, and they are acting like a woman unwatched. I find the images themselves so appealing, with their hunched bodies, bathing, and their lack of self-consciousness. But I wish these images were women-authored or at least authentic. 

Then there’s this quote by Margaret Atwood that Mary shared with me: “Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” ― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

When I was preparing to have Frankie, I read in a book that women in labor were often first attended to by other women. That is, until it was time for the baby to come out. Then the male doctor would enter. And their bodies would seize up, close up, making birth more difficult. Too aware of their openness. 

Women Without Men is a play on Hemminway’s 1927 collection of stories, “Men Without Women”–all about male loneliness in the face of war, bullfighting, divorce, abortion, and death. I want these images, this collection, to be about life. A version of it. 

Are we ever unwatched? 

Are we ever without men? 

Images to come!