“The Right to See Oneself as Gostosa”

Desire, Reciprocity, and Modes of Appearing in Photography Between Women

Abstract

This article investigates what happens when women participate in constructing photographs in which they wish to see themselves and be seen. The corpus brings together six photographic experiences produced between 2020 and 2025 by two photographers, examined alongside their memories, the accounts of the women portrayed, and the images’ subsequent trajectories. The analysis follows four dimensions: conditions of production, visual construction, self-recognition, and circulation. These experiences show that desiring an image, taking part in its making, recognizing oneself in it, and allowing it to circulate are distinct experiences. Pleasure, sensuality, vulnerability, estrangement, trust, and restriction emerge through negotiations shaped by aesthetic standards, power relations, and different temporalities. The expression “the right to see oneself as gostosa” names the possibility of participating in one’s own modes of appearing while keeping open the relationship with the photograph and the meanings it may acquire as it circulates publicly and encounters other gazes elsewhere.