Pornosophy

This was a project I completed in my second year of university; this was entirely focused on our personal practice as a graphic designer. I focused on my interest in philosophy, detailing the work of Soren Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, as well as artists like John Berger and Martin Firrell. My argument in this book was how one can distinguish between pornography and erotic art. Detailing discussions of what constitutes high and low brow, who makes this decision and why. A conclusion I came to was along the lines of one of the essays in John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing in which he says.

‘Men dream of women; women dream of themselves being dreamt of. ‘Men look at women; women watch themselves be looked at’.

The conclusion of this states that the root of this discussion is based is the male gaze and the effect of misogyny on the representation of women. I went on to detail the way that this affects the way women are seen, in nude portraits, in erotic art made specifically to arouse, in pornography, but also as mothers, children, and individuals.