Project Two -

Desire and its interpretations

What do you want? What do you desire?

…and what is the source of that desire? Where does it come from and how does desire work in practice?

The psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan characterised desire as lust, covetousness, longing, and pleasure. He developed a number of models to explore the dimensions of desire that I will use as a basis for photographic design.

In this project, I want to explore interpretations of desire, with its drives and compulsions, not as a voyeur, but rather to open the door to see that desire must be maintained rather than consumed.

As the options for content are so vast I have decided to concentrate on 4 key themes.

  • The incoming of the Real

  • Imaginary, symbolic, and fantasy in desire

  • The desire of the other

  • Language worlds

The Real

The first idea that I want to explore is The Real.

Lacan described “three registers of reality” - The imaginary, the symbolic and The Real.

When a subject reaches out and grasps the object, The Real breaks in to demolish our symbolic worlds.

The black lips represent the death of desire that comes from grasping the object.

Woman holding dead rose
Woman dropping a rose

The Rose

I desired a rose, a beauty held beyond compare

who’s sweet scent fills the air with joyous notes

Who’s tender form, of petal and flower, the mind ensnare.

As I grasp, as I hold, death arrives on black silken lips,

The Real enters, to leave it’s emptiness,

in the grave yard of desire.

Woman looking out window

The window as portal to desire

Woman looking out window
Woman scared and looking out window

The window

The window

Portal

Guardian of another world

Pregnant with ideas

Fantasies beyond this realm

Touch me, break through the barrier

Taste and see what desire may bring

Fulfil your dreams

Be whole

Be complete

O prophet of light, who’s touch brings only darkness

Desire waning beneath the ecstasy you did not give

A promise only, that turned to dust once grasped

Empty

Vacant

The Real rushes in

Woman cowering by window
Woman with hand on window

Fantasy in a bubble

It only took a glimpse, just a glimpse and I was hooked,

caught, bewitched, ensnared by a look, by a promise.

What could it be? What could happen?

What sensual pleasures could ensue to deliver pleasures treasures?

What truths could escort me onwards

down that rosy road of desire’s wish?

The fantasy in a bubble of dreams and hopes

framed by imagination’s ebb and flow, light and life

Overlayed with false impressions, but oh the sweetness in symbolic form.

Only a glimpse

Only a look

Only an eye to see

and be seen

as one.

The desire of the other

One of Lacan’s most interesting ideas is the desire of the other.

Lacan proposed that as human subjects, our desire is not directly for another person, but rather to be their desire. To be desired by them.

Imagine this in a triangular way. We desire the other person, but they desire something else. So we want to displace the thing that the other desires by becoming it.

I have tried to visualise this idea by using an apple as the object of desire for the viewer. The model in the background is trying to displace our gaze from the apple and onto her.

Look at me.

Fantasy and the imaginary

Lacan tells us that fantasy is the engine of desire. It is in the imagination that we envisage all sorts of wonders, that we can get what we want and that the object of our desire is sublime.

The imagination feeds on the promise of what might be.

A chance encounter sparks and so the flames of desire begin.

Little a gets in the way

Lacan introduced the idea of object petit a (object little a) as a central theme to understand desire.

So what is objet petit a?

It is the thing that stops us from getting what we want. The cause of desire, and the thing that keeps desire functioning.

It exists in relation to a lack, but in itself it is a nothing.

In order to keep the imaginary, the symbolic and the fantasy worlds that we create in play, object a gets in the way.

In this way, the object of desire remains sublime.

Woman in little a
Woman in dance pose
Woman in dance pose with little a
Woman in dance pose
Woman in dance pose
Woman screaming

Trapped in language

What is it like to be trapped in language?

Do you even know?

Semiotic sickness, symbolism like prison bars,

Invisible, unnoticed, not a clue.

Ravelling

Ravelling

Ravelling

Ensnared by a timeless curse of syntax and grammar

Stalking every move and thought,

to claim the victim’s prize.

Words that drift in sound and sight, to work, to fight, to rectify the timeless cause of making meaning.

I only spoke a word, to match the signifier with the signified

wrapped in language, forever entombed, in the chaos of desire’s whims.

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Project Four - The Female Gaze