(Re)Thinking the Male Gaze: (Re)Thinking the Dejeuner sur l'herbe

I created“(Re)Thinking Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe” as the first photo in “(Re)Thinking the Male Gaze, a series of photographs of famous paintings of nude women made by men, in which I flip gender roles and appropriate narratives with a female gaze. I chose it for many reasons – in particular, the fact that the three main figures in the painting are each engaging in some act of communication (gesture, glance, etc), but none of them is acknowledging the other. That’s what I feel has happened in the first stages of the #metoo debate – we aren’t hearing each other yet, aren’t engaging in dialogue across gender, generation and color.  But we will.