Claude Cahun
Cahun was a French sculptor, writer and photographer born 25th October 1894 till the 8th December 1954. They’re real name is Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob. She adopted the gender-ambiguous name Claude Cahun in 1917 and is best known for their self portraits, in which Cahun assumed a variety of personae. Their work is both political and personal and often undermined traditional concepts of static gender roles. In their autobiography, they explained, ‘Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me. ‘ Her work was very controversial for her time and even when to extremes such as shaving her head, which would’ve been frowned upon within her time; she was courageous and unafraid to express herself. She was often considered part of the Surrealist artist group due to her ‘odd’ and ‘different’ work for her time.
https://www.jerseyheritage.org/collection-items/claude-cahun
Shannon O’Donnell
Shannon O’Donnell was born in Jersey, Channel Islands and also attended Hautlieu School, studying Photography, Media and History which all seem to interlink within her work. Her images explore themes around gendered experience with a focus on femininity and masculinity as gendered traits. Through her deep research and a sociological approach to her work she explores the self and identity. Her fascination lies within questioning society and challenging traditional views of gender through her work. She claims her work is informed by her own personal experience and through interviewing specific demographics to help gage a sociological understanding of how gender is viewed or challenged within mainstream society.
Shannon came into Hautlieu and gave us a presentation that described her life as a student and showed us her inspirations, her research methods, her documentary films, and her techniques when it comes to creating photographs and videos.
Her inspirations are: Claude Cahun, Duane Michaels, Casa Susanna, Walter Pfeiffer, Adi Nes, Judith Butler and June Singer.
I noted some of her techniques when it comes to filming/photographing. She enjoys the use of sound scaping which consists of recording different sounds and compiling them together to put in the background of her videos, creating a dramatic and compelling effect. She also tends to record herself in front of the camera instead of actually photographing herself. She enjoys playing with her movements, actions and tends to have fun in front of the camera while recording in order to get the perfect shot for her narrative. After recording herself, she puts her videos into a software and actually print screen’s sections of her videos that she feels fits with her narrative and thus creates a still image out of her videos. She then edits the still images, creating an intriguing still image. She insists that tests are very important when it comes to filming in order to get the right lighting, exposure etc.
https://www.shannonodonnell.co.uk/about
Comparison of Cahun and O’Donnell
TECHNICAL: The lighting that the two artists seem to use are very similar and appear to both use natural lighting. Both also seem to have a high level of control over the camera. It is easy to recognise that they have positioned and located their camera in a specific way in order to get their self portraits correct. Both artists most likely also used a lower aperture in order to achieve a brighter photograph since natural lighting was used. I know that Shannon in fact did not use shutter speed as she likes to video herself in certain position and then create still images out of that video, however, Claude Cahun most likely used a fast shutter speed so that she didn’t have to stay in the position for a long amount of time since her images were self portraits.
VISUAL: Both artists, as you can see from the images above, enjoy photographing and editing their images in black and white. Claude is an early photographer, therefore the technology wasn’t quite advanced as it is now, therefore her images are most likely black and white due to the technology that was available in Cahun’s day. On the other hand, Shannon has clearly edited her still images to be black and white, most likely to increase the atmosphere of her narrative in her images, and also maybe because she was aiming to create images similar to those of Cahun’s. The tones of their images in this example is quite bright, however often the tone of their images are quite dark which creates a mysterious atmosphere and also a historical atmosphere. The composition of both their images are a little different. Cahun clearly positioned herself into specific poses and in different places in order to create a nicely composed image, however O’Donnell enjoys filming herself in front of the camera in various different poses using various different movements in order to capture the perfect still image while editing.
CONTEXTUAL&CONCEPTUAL: To conclude, both artists have very similar concepts. They both enjoy exploring identity and more specifically how gender is a social construct and they both enjoy breaking that boundary of a construct concept and exploring fluidity of gender through photography. As you can see, Cahun was not gender-constructed and explored the boundaries through hair experimentation and clothing experimentation. Shannon also does this through her videos and still images. As you can see in Shannon’s photo on the right, she is exploring gender by portraying herself in a suit which is seen as powerful and masculine, almost breaking the stereotypes. Both artists; photography narratives also come from a personal standpoint within their identity.