In what way can the work of Lewis Bush and Clare Rae both be considered political?

In this essay i will be investigating the ways in which the work of the photographers Lewis Bush and Clare Rae can both be considered political. I will be evaluating the work of these artists and looking into their background too to help answer the question of how their work can be considered political. Lewis bush is a photographer whos work explores forms of contemporary power and Clare Rae whos work considers the physical and cultural landscapes of jersey while imagining her body in relation to the place. Both of the photographers have been artists in the residence of jersey therefore i am going to analyse their approaches to photographing the island whilst conveying their political messages. So, through this essay i am trying to prove that through Lewis Bush’s financial industry project ‘trading zones’ and Clare Rae’s exploration of gender representation and sexuality are considered as being political matters.

Lewis Bush is a British photographer, writer, curator and educator. He recently created a project in Jersey called “Trading Zones”. The idea of the project was to show the state of the financial industry in Jersey and draw attention to forms of invisible power that operate in the world. Through this project he shows the development of the finance center in jersey and shows how finance depicts the capital of St Helier. “Trading Zones is the result of six months spent as the 2018 Archisle photographer in residence at the Société Jersiaise. There are various differing sectors to the project and the main section that stood out to me was the portrait section in which Bush photographed what appears to be hundreds of corporate financial workers and blending them all together to result in what the average finance worker may look like. By combining many of the workers faces it brings the financial working community together as one and shows their dominance as a community however shows how powerless they are as an individual. The blending of the portraits shows that as an individual each worker means nothing and too when blended together to make the ‘average’ financial worker this discredits them as an individual and depicts them as only being ‘average’. This shows the dominating power of finance as a large corporate business and how all of their workers have no significance and are all looked at as ‘just the average finance worker. This section of his project also shows the changes in style and appearance of a financial worker over time and this is exploring the political landscape of change over time

The final product of “Trading Zones” was presented by Lewis creatively in Jersey’s old police station which was once the center for financial crime investigations. In my opinion this sets the tone of Lewis’s opinion of the finical sector in Jersey.  His personal view of finance in jersey is that is it “the accidental product of events going back almost a thousand yeats, but is also the result of every international choices made over the last half century”. Furthermore, after reading comments left by people who had viewed the expedition it is clear that the majority share that negative view. Lewis Bush’s work is very clearly political by the way it causes debate and makes people question what they really think about who is operating the financial sector and who’s best interests they have at heart.

Clare Rae’s work is most definitely considered political through the exploration of feminism and the representation of gender which is in huge discussion of people in the community. The topics of gender fluidity, identity and gender are all aspects of Clare Rae’s work and are major topics of controversy in which has caused a division between people, not only in Jersey but across the world. The project that she worked on in Jersey was titled ‘Entre Nous’ and brought together her representations of gender by exploiting her body in relation the the jersey landscape. She was influenced by a queer surrelaist artist named Claude Cahun who lived in Paris in the 1920’s. “In 2017 I undertook an artist’s residency with Archisle: the Jersey Contemporary Photography Programme to research the archive of Claude Cahun works held by Jersey Heritage. During my time there I began capturing a series of photographs alongside my research, starting with the sites inhabited and imaged by Cahun on the island, from the 1910s until her death in 1954”  – “My series, Never standing on two feet, considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date”Claude Cahun came to Jersey after the Germans declared war on France as she was Jewish and wanted to escape the threat of being taken to a concentration camp. While Cahun was in Jersey she liked to cause trouble: she would write rude notes in German and sneak them into the German soldiers pockets but she was once caught and sentenced to death. Jersey was liberated before she was killed but she would have rather died for her cause. Clair Ray came to Jersey to use its unique landscape to recreate Cahun’s work with her own style to it too. Jersey also holds the largest collection of Cahun’s original work which further inspired the project of Claire Rae. Cahun’s self portrait photographs and texts have become highly influential for artists dealing with questions of gender identity and representations of the female body and Claire Rae takes inspiration from this with the clear intentions to “unsettle traditional representations of the female figure”. This clearly shows that Claire Rae’s work can be considered political in the sense that she is tackling the controversial thoughts about gender and identity and portraying what she believes in through her photographs which people may disagree with.

I think that it is important for artists like Claire Rae to provide artwork like this to deal with political issues and creatively get their message out. I like her work and her approach to this political issue by exploiting her body in relation to the jersey landscape to which challenges the idea of male dominance and female empowerment. The idea of the project has these clear challenging ideas about women being adventurous and exploring the outdoors which challenge the traditional stereotypes of only men being accepted to do this. The project could have been included to perhaps include the challenging stereotypes of men too. Although this doesn’t directly relate to the artists story of herself being gay it would improve the project to give a more diverse approach to the project.

There are a variety of similarities and differences between Bush’s work on ‘Trading zones’ and Rae’s project ‘ Entre Nous’. For example they were both based in Jersey for the duration of their project however approached the island in a very different way. Bush chose to come to Jersey out of freedom because he wanted to focus on the financial sector. On the other hand Claire Rae was somewhat influenced to come over by Claude Cahun. Lewis Bush’s work is made within the genre of documentary photography in the sense he captures the political problems in a truthful way without staging his photographs and bending the truth. Where as Rae’s work uses a tableaux approach as she uses a staged approach to structure her political messages in the photo. A definite similarity between both of the photographers are that they are both exploring through their work the changes that are occuring within society and the response of these changes that society have. Although the fundamental concept of their work is somewhat similar with the theme of ‘change’ bush photographs the changing financial sector in jersey whilst RAe photographs the changing views on gender and idenity which are very different subjects. In conclusion, the work that i have focused on of Lewis Bush’s and Claire Rae’s are considered political due to the fact they are dealing with issues that are in conversation within society and they both aim to stem a debate about an issue or raise awareness about it.

Bibliography: 

http://www.lewisbush.com/trading-zones/

http://www.clarerae.com/work/never-standing-on-two-feet