Honey & Rakija for Lunch

In the context of this workshop, we investigated the male gaze in GTA V, which covers unmistakably over Los Santos at different levels. As a player, you can choose between three avatars, all of which are male. In the game’s missions, women only play a role when they need to be rescued.

For our project, we stood in front of NPC‘s cars and photographed the recurring phenomenon of the middle finger, using the Snapmatic function of the game. While we were creating this series of portraits, we got hit by cars, driven by men more than twice as much as by female drivers. Women tend to stay calmer and drive away more often than their fellow men NPC’s. We also realized that walking NPC’s react differently when being approached, depending on their gender.

As a utopian response to the dominant male gaze, we have created a video in which a female citizen of Los Santos has had enough of patriarchy, emancipates herself as she turns the tables and chases away the dominant males. This scene was coded and programmed in an external software, which we later implemented into the game.


Prints on Paper and Video
Project created by Jiyan Céline Schmidiger and Ariane Hügli
Term assignment Camera Arts Lucerne, coached by Marco de Mutiis
January 2024