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  5. arrow_forward_ios National Types of Beauty

National Types of Beauty

DAB Staff Project: National Types of Beauty, by Cherine Fahd
DAB Staff Project: National Types of Beauty, by Cherine Fahd

National Types of Beauty

Cherine Fahd

In the early 1900s, tobacco companies produced illustrated cigarette cards that were sold as collectibles to consumers of tobacco. National Types of Beauty was one such set. Issued in 1928, it consists of 36 portraits of women who, according to the British eye, exemplified the beauty of a given race. Each card is a black and white photograph depicting a woman and describing her according to facial appearance, colouring, class, level of education, and who she belonged to. These descriptions classified women as specimens while classifying race according to colonial desires of the era. This practice emerged from ethnographic photography of that period and is problematic in its representations of race and women. 

This project reworks the original images, modifying them through digital collage. These digital interventions subvert the racial classification of the portraits by digitally inserting artist Cherine Fahd’s ‘Arabic’ eyes onto the faces of each of the women. For Fahd, this act tests, critiques and challenges the ethnographic classification of appearance upon racial grounds by collapsing the colonial and misogynist gaze.  

National Types of Beauty was selected for the Athens Photo Festival in Greece in 2018. It was also previously exhibited at Artereal Gallery, Sydney as well as in the curated exhibition, An Unorthodox Flow of Images at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne. This project was funded by an Australia Council for the Arts project grant and provided the springboard for the associated article, ‘Classifying ‘national types of beauty’: from cigarette cards to Miss Universe,’ published on The Conversation.
 

School of Design
Acknowledgements

Athens Photo Festival

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DAB Staff Project: Critical Bodies, by Cherine Fahd

Critical Bodies

Cherine Fahd

DAB Staff Project: A Portrait is a Puzzle, by Cherine Fahd

A Portrait is a Puzzle

Cherine Fahd

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Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and the Boorooberongal People of the Dharug Nation upon whose ancestral lands our campuses now stand. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands. 

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