'All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and the doesn't hurt.'
Charles M. Schulz
Although things are changing, Valentine's Day is a holiday that seems to stubbornly cling on to traditional stereotypes and traditional visuals. It's more than just love, love is universal. Its' not even really about relationships, marriage or even love. Valentine's day is all about romance. Romance if you think about it, isn't really even a thing, it's an action one person conveys to another.
Historically, romance is focused on the woman, the vision of beauty deserving of gifts and praise by their male partner. It really has nothing to do with how much they love each other, it's all about a finically motivated expression. The flower industry, the chocolate industry, they go all out on Valentine's Day. I waited this year to see a few same sex couples in their advertising and promotion.
I have been pleasantly surprised the last few years how many gay and lesbian couples have been utilized in Christmas commercials. I have yet to see the same thing for Valentine's, at least not in mainstream media. I'm sure there are probably some I've missed, but although same-sex love and same-sex are more widely accepted, same-sex romance is still often hard to find and see.
This is one of the reasons I love this year's Valentine themed images from Roger from RMark Photography. Men are still targeted as the gift giver, not gift receiver, so I loved seeing them doted upon. Roger's goal was to capture his models at the moment they received their Valentine chocolates from their romantic beau. Roger set the tone by encouraging his models to imagine they just discovered they received the perfect gift to stimulate their sweet spot.
'The guys who posed had a great deal of fun with the Valentines photographs. With only boxes of Valentines candy as a costume, the photographs are clearly a fantasy. This allowed them to be playful in exploring poses. I set the tone by saying 'Look at how many Boxes of Valentines candy you have received from you "Gentlemen Callers". I wanted to capture them with a smile on their face and a twinkle to their eye.'
No comments:
Post a Comment