The aim of this project is to narrate the world of women through an object usually assigned to women, either for fashion or habit/tradition: shoes. Shoes are culturally and socially associated with particular meanings: from the construction of female identity to the formal representation of a fetish, which is perhaps more psychological than real, and that sometimes gives rise to obsession among both men and women.
The project takes distance from the cliché that considers women’s shoes as a tool of seduction. My intention is to start from the shoe as a first point of contact, perhaps the privileged one, with the female world. A multi-faceted world that tells stories/speaks of intimacy, strength, defense instruments, but also self-assertion. The result is a mirror, not pretending to be exhaustive or conclusive of the women’s universe, in which everyone can find her/himself self-reflected beyond the stereotype.
The series Cinderella, a fairy character who is universally known for her shoes, is composed of fifteen diptychs. Each pair of shoot shoes corresponds to the image of the woman owning the shoes. Diptychs are at the same time still life and portraits, accounting for the complexity of a microcosm as a way to read, discover and investigate its singularity. In my research the social status or age of the photographed subjects is not less important than their personal stories. They are all nameless women who tell stories through their faces and shoes. And they are stories that I borrow to tell a story on myself.
Barbara Malacart
