SOURCE: “Subject, Object, Camera: Photographing Women in The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” in Sexuality, the Female Gaze, and the Arts: Women, the Arts, and Society, edited by Ronald Dotterer and Susan Bowers, Susquehanna University Press, 1992, pp. 53-63.

In the following essay, Green discusses aspects of female objectification, sexual difference, and the significance of photography in a scene from the novel and film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Two women meet for a photography session. Tereza, the photographer, is married to Tomas, a surgeon. The other, Sabina, is his long-standing mistress. Tereza begins to take photographs of the naked Sabina, but the one behind the camera soon becomes its subject following an exchange of roles:

It took Sabina some time before she could bring herself to slip out of the robe entirely. The situation she found herself in was proving a bit more difficult than she had expected. After...