Female gaze: between publicity and privacy. Acting and directing in front of the lenses in Milda Drazdauskaitė and Veronika Šleivytė photography

Female gaze is not continuous, homogenous and easily grasped: its most significant and clearest aspects are uncertainty and decolonization of the established gaze, the search for a new point of view. In recent years, the names of two photographers have become increasingly commonly heard – Milda Drazdauskaitė and Veronika Šleivytė – names, of women who have contributed during different periods (Šleivytė mostly during the interbellum, while Drazdauskaitė – the Soviet period) towards formation of such gaze in the context of Lithuanian photography.  Looking both at photographs intended for public display and at photos from personal albums, which for a long time had to be content with “private” display without receiving the status of a work of art, we look for expressions of the female gaze at that time in the semi-fictional world of images directed by Veronika Šleivytė’s shots and in the characters constructed by Milda Drazdauskaitė from herself and others.

Marija Martinaitytė is currently studying history of art and curatorship, writes about photography and contemporary art.