Laura Aguilar

For this week, I decided to comment on the photography of Laura Aguilar. Although Aguilar suffers of depression and experiences suicidal thoughts from time to time, due to her negative body image, I admire that she uses these forces as inspiration. In her adult life, she ultimately realizes she must accept her current body state. and in result, she uses photography to document battles with body image. In the majority of her photography, she focuses on the naked human body, either her own or of others. For example, in the year 2001, she released the photograph Center 100.  In this black and white photograph, Aguilar sits in the center of the photograph, nude. She sits in the middle of a landscape of rocks of different shapes and sizes. I enjoyed the fact that she compares her curvaceous figure to rocks, and I respect she posed nude for the photography.  She covers her face with her hair in order to keep sole focus on her body as being apart of nature. The black and white filter is minimalistic, so extraneous colors do not interfere with her ultimate message. I can relate to Laura Aguilar because I too, like many other individuals, have experienced negative body image through out my life, and had low self-confidence. However, I applaud Aguilar to showcase one of her insecurities not as a flaw, but as strength.

            Aguilar’s work is unique to the works we have discussed because she addresses a topic that our class has not discussed thoroughly: body image. However, her work does address empowerment of women’s natural bodies, which is similar to Yolanda López’s work. López focuses on empowerment of women due to discrimination of patriarchal forces while Aguilar focuses on empowerment of women due to body image.