Get Your Gun Up

The male gaze, staged in the classic western genre, forms the backdrop to Get Your Gun Up. Citing Sergio Leone's >>The Good, the Bad and the Ugly<<, a duel is presented in which two young women fight for the resounding triumph in view of their perfect bodies. Instead of the western hero's revolver the artist makes use of the cliché of the 'weapons of a woman', here however less as an instrument of seduction than mainly as arsenal of poses of female self-expression. The two protagonists appear against the setting of a field of graves in the open prairie. By the selected image sections they remain anonymous. The belly and hip areas, effectively presented in tight panties adorned with leather straps and sheriff stars, and the carefully applied eye and lip make up, represent the female body. Minimal gestures - the tapping index finger of a hand put in the hip, mistrustfully contracting eyes or a contemptuously grinning mouth - make clear that the women are duellists rather than combatants. The potential defeat in the fight for the observer's approval would equal death. (Bettina Schönfelder)