Marcie Docherty

“In Pursuit of Muscle”

University of the Arts London (England) Licence

Image from “In Pursuit of Muscle” project by Marcie Docherty

Biography

I’m a photographer and writer. My work utilises the theoretical contradictions of the photograph, mutating it into a methodology for countersexual subjectivity.

I’ve exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and The Glasgow Gallery of photography. I have been published by Global 50/50, Lightreadings magazine, Shutter Hub, The Photographers Gallery. I’m a finalist for the 2026 Dior Prix and NPG’s 2026 Taylor Wessing prize.

The project

In Pursuit of Muscle capitalizes on Susan Sontag's fret, 'to photograph is to appropriate the thing being photographed'. Utilising the photographs' relationship to authorship/ownership, and Judith Butler's theory of performativity; the project seeks to possess a desired boyhood and masculinity. hone in specifically on exercise, given its universal capacity to contort bodies. reference archetypes of the 1970s-1990s that I grew up envying, The Outsiders, My Bodyguard, The Goonies and Stand By Me, using colour grading, costume and set design. I Butler's gender as a 'perlocutionary', where gender is reified through behaviour produced by its existence, collapses the distinction between staged and documentary photography, prompting an exclusively staged practice. I utilise analogue film given the parallels between the chemical modes of inscription found in the darkroom and Paul B. Preciado's Pharmacopornographic regime, retaining 35mm borders as a visual anchor of the author's presence.

Image from “In Pursuit of Muscle” project by Marcie Docherty

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