“Veranschaulichung” is an exploration of how to deal with experiences as a woman* in public transport. Staring, grinning, winking. Uninvited gestures directed at the female-coded body that persist even when they visibly cause discomfort; an expression of subtle yet tangible violence and result of patriarchal power structures. The possibilities for reaction are limited: confrontation costs energy and safety, walking away means compromising one’s everyday life. Referring to Susan Sontag’s understanding of the camera as a male-coded, predatory tool, photographing and subsequently drawing becomes a means of reclaiming agency, of making visible, of “shooting back.”

“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power. (…) There is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. (…) The camera as phallus is, at most, a flimsy variant of the inescapable metaphor that everyone unselfconsciously employs. However hazy our awareness of this fantasy, it is named without subtlety whenever we talk about “loading” and “aiming” a camera, about “shooting”.”

Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977