THIS IS OUR YOUTH

                                
These three grainy photographs from my teenage years expose more than just my body but also the indifference and body-horror/shame I felt towards myself. I think this is  a central issue for this project to explore that both the need for exhibition and the isolation of shyness and shame. How does the sins of the father affect the son? My own father was a sex addict and extreme exhibitionist/naturist. My mother FAR more conservative- does this duality produce this shame? Or perhaps this shame is as Foucault says is a product of our social construct: the repressive hypothesis. 

                             

I noticed that in all three photographs  I am either looking away from the camera, exposed, on display but not participating, or headless. Is this a product of doubt and shame?  Is the need to expose oneself an act of liberation or is it born from the constraints that it is expected of one to deviate when so confined?

                               

  Voyeurism is participation, there for is exhibitionism the act of liberation for the self or for the other? In other words does exposing one's self liberate and expose the self or does it liberate the voyeur and by turn expose them as a voyeur?