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

For my essay I intend to explore how the photographers Clare Rae and Lewis Bush can be considered political. Clare Rae is a photographer, based in Melbourne, Australia, who herself engages with the landscape she is photographing to represent an underlying themes or concept often relating to feminism, whereas Lewis Bush is a British photographer who explores themes of power and inequality in the world, questioning who holds power and how it is used.  Both these photographer explore themes that are relevant and being considered political in their own ways.

Clare Rae

In March 2017 Archisle invited Clare Rae to a research residency project studying the Claude Cahun collection held by Jersey, engaging with images in the photographic archives of the Société Jersiaise. She explained: “I was primarily interested in viewing the Cahun photographs held at Jersey Archive, and I knew I also wanted to make some photographs on the island. This is where her exhibition ‘Entre Nous’  was created, bringing together photographs by the French artist Claude Cahun and her contemporary work  almost 70 years apart.

Claude Cahun’s  was an avant-garde queer artist who’s photographic self-portraits, in which she assumed a variety of personas, were associated with the Parisian surrealist movement in the 1920s, before she moved to Jersey in the 1930s where she lived most of her life. Her work was both political and personal, and often undermined traditional concepts of static gender roles. She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”   While many male Surrealists depicted women as objects of male desire, Cahun staged images of herself that challenge the idea of the politics of gender. She was exploring her identity, not defining it. Her self-portraits often interrogates space, such as domestic interiors  and Jersey landscapes using rock crevasses and granite gate posts.

When I see this image I interpret it as Clare Rae representing the femininity surrounded by  a vast landscape perhaps portraying how herself and woman feel in society. Throughout this series she incorporates Jersey Neolithic history, dolmens and stone remains, being inspired by the work Claude Cahuns’s produced in Jersey. I think this use of stone in her images is representing masculinity in the world, the contrast of her fluid body positions to the structured .. stone shapes being deliberate and political. In the particular image above, her use of tableaux photography where she places herself looking around at the surrounding environment, positioned on top the stone, I think further emphases her views of being a female in the world today, linking to Cahun’s work when she was undermining traditional gender roles in the 1920s. This can be considered political as she’s also addressing gender roles and identities, reflecting Claude Cahun when woman were always represented by male artists, never representing themselves. Clare Rae states ‘she’s not trying to reveal something other own personality, but more depict an experience of how being a women in our time is sometimes precarious and uncomfortable’, similar to Claude cajun exploring the male gaze and its relationship to both the female body and our imagining of the landscape. I think this is political it goes against the gender roles of the 1930s where women didn’t represent themselves, Clare Rae placing herself into a landscape, her body positions against and on top of rocks representing how being a woman is ‘sometimes uncomfortable’.

Claude Cahun defended woman’s rights and was pivotal in the movement for gender equality as she represented herself however she wanted as feminine, masculine and androgynous, defying all attempts to categorize her according to gender binary. Rather, she creates her own category, where she’s free to express herself according to her own desires. This work is very political as it goes against all the gender traditions in a society where these were rigidly enforced about how women where expected to act, helping change the political landscape and rights for women.

This political theme emulates through Clare Rae’s work as she surrounds herself or places her body around stone and structured objects that are strong and dominate within the image. This is then juxtaposed with her feminine body which many of the images only a small part is shown like her hands or legs in a way dehumanising her and representing all women.

‘Like Cahun’s, my photographs depict my body in relation to place”

Lewis Bush

Lewis Bush is a photographer, writer and researcher exploring themes such as power and inequality in the world. His exhibition ‘Trading Zones’ is the result of six months spent as the 2018 Archaise photographer in residence at the Société Jersiaise. It addressed the public debate about the activities of the ‘finance industry which he finds is an enormously complex field, spanning multiple practices, cultures, and jurisdictions.’ This area has gone largely unrepresented in documentary practice due to its complexity and difficulty to access. To do this he used  a wide range of photographic approaches, ranging from conventional photography, to appropriated imagery, cameraless photographs, public polling, and the reuse of data sources. He wanted examine different aspects of finance, highlighting aspects of Jersey’s past and present which have been conducive to the growth of finance, and inviting Jersey people to contribute their own thoughts about the industry.

This image portrays portraits of finance workers combining together creating two images representing the male and female identities within the finance industry. I think this can be considered political it’s essentially merging together all the individuals working in the finance industry and displaying them as one person, taking away their originality , perhaps representing the stereotype of some who works in an office. Bush draws attention to forms of invisible power that operate in the world and by representing people as merged could link to the idea of shaping individuals of finance as the industry changes.  His aim was ‘try and give viewers a hint of what finance is in a place like Jersey, but also the strange nature of it’, the merging of the faces being a part of that. He describes finance as ‘profoundly ancient and highly modern’ as it’s a product of event going back thousands of years but is still highly relevant today in Jersey. Expressing this makes his work political as he uses information historic and new and documents the changing of peoples opinions on the industry. He does this by allowing visitors at his exhibition to comment their views, giving a platform for people to express their thoughts negative or positive.

‘Trading Zones’ also includes a series of photos taken around the island as Lewis was pointing his camera towards other financial centres. “I wanted to connect faraway places with the local industry,” he explained.

Comparison

Both photographers work can be considered political, Clare Rae’s work expressing views on gender roles by representing herself in her images emphases her views of being a female in the world today, whereas Lewis Bush’s work documents the finance industry and forms of invisible power in relation to the employees and history. Clare Rae uses a tableaux approach, placing herself in the landcape where shes surrounded by structured objects, such as furniture and stone. Lewis bush on the other hand uses documentary photography portraying the effects on the developing finance industry

Links

behind the scenes video link:
https://ccp.org.au/about/news/behind-the-scenes-of-entre-nous-claude-cahun-and-clare-rae

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

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/entre-nous-contemporary-artist-collides-avant-garde-photographs/

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160629-claude-cahun-the-trans-artist-years-ahead-of-her-time

https://www.theartstory.org/artist-cahun-claude.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/05/the-1920s-young-women-took-the-struggle-for-freedom-into-their-personal-lives

Lewis Bush

http://www.archisle.org.je/

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/trading-zones-new-exhibition-explores-finance-industry-culture/#.W-s7Pi2cbUo

Trading Zones

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

“the audience is often partly an abstract and unknowable future, that documentary photography is in part a practice of archive and record making for posterity or history” (Bush 2016: 1)

In this essay, I will be exploring the concepts behind the personal works of Lewis Bush and Clare Rae in an effort to showcase how their exhibitions can be considered political. Both artists have experienced Jersey closely as part of the Archisle ‘Photographer in Residence’ programme in which they produced their different interpretations of the political landscape, Bush choosing to focus on the local finance industry whilst Rae investigated roles of gender. Clare Rae’s exhibition titled “Entre Nous” features works alongside Claude Cahun who served as an inspiration to the concept of her work on gender and the landscape. On the other hand Lewis Bush’s “Trading Zones” serves as the beginning of a long-term concept on the financial meaning of onshore and offshore locations.

Lewis Bush

“Trading Zones” is the result of a six month residency in Jersey, in which Lewis Bush investigates the local finance industry. Bush’s work is a visual documentation of the “profoundly ancient and highly modern” (Bush, 2018) industry that reflects the style of the documentary movement where a situation is shown simply without interference. Bush explores the secrecy surrounding the industry in various mediums, presenting conventional photographs as well as cameraless photographs and data sources. The finance industry may sometimes be perceived negatively as it becomes a main focus over other industries such as agriculture. I personally view it as immoral for off-shore businesses to safely place their money within Jersey to avoid taxes, however this is not actually illegal to do. Lewis gives the viewers of the exhibition the opportunity to reflect their own opinions on the industry through cards titled “Finance is……” He acknowledges how “the population of the island support (or do not support) the industry’s presence here” (Bush, 2018). Bush identifies that at its core, finance is just “the accidental product of events going back almost a thousand years, but it is also the result of very intentional choices made over the last half century” (Bush, 2018). This statement reflects how the abandonment of other important industries such as the fishing industry has been in order to adapt with the modern times and other important cities such as the city of London, what is considered to be the “onshore” for many of the businesses that use Jersey as a deposit for their money.

Lewis Bush, Trading Zones, 2018

Clare Rae

Clare Rae’s “Entre Nous” is heavily inspired by the works of Claude Cahun, a notable female, queer artist who escaped to Jersey in the second World War to avoid the Nazis as she was Jewish. Cahun’s work explored gender through self-portraiture, reflecting the ideals of surrealism through the use of different personas that define static gender roles. Clare Rae has taken inspiration from Cahun’s work in order to present her own interpretation of gender through her relationship with the landscape. She was drawn to the island of Jersey as it holds the biggest collection of Claude Cahun’s work, selections of her work are featured in the exhibition in which they must be destroyed afterwards as they are not original prints. This is because the gallery does not withhold museum standards such as the maintenance of a stable temperature. Shot with a limited number of black and white film, Clare Rae positions herself in her environment in a way that suggests the significance of a female in a man-made landscape. Using aspects of tableaux, the act of staging a photograph in order to depict an important scene of history, Clare contradicts the expected norms of the representation of the female body; that in which is as a result of male artists. Clare demonstrates that she takes the importance of her work into consideration, even becoming influenced by the narrative of her own images when deciding the layout of her photos in the exhibition. Michelle Mountain, Program Manager CCP notes “Clare had quite a good vision in her mind for how she wanted the exhibition to look” (CCP, 2018). Rae had chosen to paint the walls of the gallery separate colours, white for Clare Rae and a soft grey for Claude Cahun, in order to distinguish between the conversation of gender between the two artists.

Clare Rae, Entre Nous, 2018

In conclusion, both Lewis Bush and Clare Rae’s works demonstrate Jersey as a political landscape in different ways. Bush’s perspective aims to focus on the effects of the finance industry on the local population whereas in contrast Clare Rae’s work almost feels more personal to her on the basis of it being her own body in the landscape. Choosing to take a documentary approach, Bush is able to capture exactly what he sees as an outsider, yet his works are supported by such a great amount of research that his perspective becomes more relatable to the actual population of Jersey. On the other hand, Clare Rae carefully stages her images showing the importance of the issue both to her, as well as to other people such as the very person she took inspiration from, Claude Cahun.

Bibliography

Bate, D (2015), The Art of the Document In: Bate, D (2015), Art Photography. London: Tate Publishing

Bush (2016), What is Documentary Photography II, Location of site: http://www.disphotic.com/what-is-documentary-photography-ii/

CCP (2018), Behind the scenes of Entre Nous: Claude Cahun and Clare Rae, Location of site: https://vimeo.com/271385464

Feuerhelm (2018), Lewis Bush: General Interrogation and Jersey Metropole Primer, Location of site: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2018/09/lewis-bush-general-interrogation-jersey-metropole-primer.html

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

Recently along with fellow photography students I visited Lewis Bush’s ‘Trading Zones’ exhibition and Clare Rae’s ‘Entre Nous’ exhibition in response to the late photographer Claude Cahun. Now the work that makes up both of these exhibitions is definitely something that can strongly be considered as political. How so is what takes some explaining.

My initial thoughts and feelings on the work of these 3 photographers from the exhibitions that we visited was not that the work stood out as particularly political, instead I was just intrigued and taken by how visually interesting and conceptual the images being displayed were. It was immediately clear with the Entre Nous exhibition that both Clare Rae and Claude Cahun’s work had obvious visual links and similarities, a running theme somewhat; however after initially being exposed to Lewis Bush’s Trading Zones exhibition, his works didn’t all share a similar visual theme or aesthetic and instead they were more in sets or projects under one overhead theme of the finance industry. Despite this, after looking into all 3 of these photographers’ work in terms of the exhibitions in much more depth, it was very evident that each of their collated works had a strong political theme / issue running throughout.

In order to get a good enough understanding of where each of the photographers’ work is coming from it would only be right to take a brief look at the background of the three photographers…

Lewis Bush is a photographer, writer and educator, born in London in the year 1988. With a Master’s degree in documentary photography, he is a lecturer of photojournalism and documentary photography at London College of Communication (LCC.) His main beliefs and aims of his photography are “to draw attention to forms of invisible power that operate in the world” believing that “power is always problematic” because it is inherently “arbitrary and untransparent.” This says a lot about how Lewis Bush approaches photography in a documentary fashion, with a strong belief on the topic of power and how that is effective upon society and people individually. Specifically looking at his Trading Zones Exhibition which was located at the old police station in the royal square of St Helier, that took place in September. This was a body of work which was a result of Lewis Bush’s time as a photographer in residence at the Societe Jersaise in Jersey, exploring different aspects and topics surrounding the theme of finance.

Clare Rae is a photographer / artist who is based in Melbourne, Australia, who completed a Master of Arts by research in 2014 at Monash University, and received first class Honours in Fine Art in 2009 at RMIT University. Her approach to photography is very unorthodox as she experiments with performance and the use of her own body and figure as a subject of the images which she produces. ” Her work is informed by feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body.” One of Rae’s main interests within her individual practice of performance photography is how ”the camera can act as a collaborator, rather than mute witness, to the performer.” As a self-proclaimed artist as well as being a photographer, this incorporation of performance within her photography is something which could be considered as a more artistic than photographic matter, in terms of lens based imagery. Specifically looking at Clare Rae’s work from the Entre Nous exhibition, this was a response to the work of Jersey based photographer Claude Cahun who explored similar themes and issues, predominantly that of feminism and gender stereotypes, within her work. Although the photographic practices or these two photographers are separated by 70 years they have a lot of similarities. Claude Cahun was an avant-garde artist and writer, who in the 1920s, was associated with a creative movement known as the Parisian surrealist movement. She was not a stereotypical citizen of Jersey, and probably still wouldn’t be classed as one to this day. She was a lesbian who was in a relationship with her half sister, she was also Jewish and she was  activist who protested against the German occupation. To sum up the effects of her work ”Cahun’s subversive self-portrait photographs and texts have become highly influential for artists dealing with questions of gender identity and representation of the female body.”

In terms of how Lewis Bush and Clare Rae’s work is considered political, it is very evident after looking at their photographic intentions and ideas that they both cover very political matters within society. Although very different matters, they are certainly political, Bush’s being that of the finance industry which is very intertwining with politics, and Rae’s being that of feminism, equality and gender stereotypes which are also very politically discussed topics. These are political matters that all effect society somewhat in positive ways, and on the other hand sometimes not so much.

Bush covered various aspects of what finance actually is, specifically on the island of Jersey. These aspects showed different ways in which finance can be perceived, used and thought about by society. He approached the project in a very modern and experimental manner, with a range of subjects and topics linked to finance, whilst  not going overboard with the experimentation, in order to not create too much abstraction. He used a wide range of archival imagery within the exhibition in his own way in order to help display his findings and interests that he found along the way of completing the project. One of the most interesting parts of the exhibition was the fact that he had made part of it interactive. Allowing visitors of the exhibition (members of the general public) to create there own response to the words ”Finance Is…” On cards that were attached to part of the exhibition. This allowed for people’s views and opinions on the topic of the exhibition to be expressed and viewed by others. Overall I believe that Bush’s exhibition was very successful at portraying the finance industry for what it is in a visual way.

In contrast to Lewis Bush’s work Clare Rae’s approach to her work that made up the Entre Nous exhibition was more contemporary, and has more of a discreet and hidden meaning. Although we are aware that her work covered topics such as feminism and gender stereotypes, the imagery displayed in the exhibition is fairly open for interpretation as it is making the audience/viewer have to think about what each individual image is trying to portray. One of the main and most blatantly obvious visual differences between Bush and Rae’s work is that Rae’s photographs are monochrome, this may be in order to remove any distractions or false meanings that could be caused by the use of colour. Overall I believe that Clare Rae executed a very impressive exhibition which was a great response to the work of the surrealist photographer Claude Cahun and the topics surrounding her work.

Behind The Scenes Of Entre Nous Claude Cahun & Clare Rae

In conclusion it is very evident to me that both Lewis Bush and Clare Rae’s work can be considered as political, as they both cover extremely political matters specifically within the two projects of work which they have recently exhibited.

(The sources that I have used for information are linked throughout this post in blue.)