Reflecting on what I’ve learnt:

As a medium, photography has had the biggest impact on me. The production of photo-books, specifically, is inspirational as it requires the photographer to consider how all the photos link together and to consider what order they need to placed to create the strongest emotional impact on the viewer. Photo books are highly versatile and can produce narratives which can be manipulated by both the photographer and the viewer. The use of juxtaposition, black and white, symbolism, etc. may make images ambiguous, leaving the interpretation up to the viewer and sparking their imagination

Interpreting Love

Interpreting Rebellion

To explore the theme of rebellion, I used the medium of film, creating the piece ‘The Pursuit of Social acceptance‘. This proved to be extremely insightful as I had to consider where the focus of the audience would be when the normally-still-images are now moving. Additionally, within the film I felt I had to be completely confident with the one idea as all the footage had to link to each other. I also had to consider how sound can affect how my images (or moving stills) would be interpreted. The production of the film taught me to be highly organised in my planning, shooting and editing of the project.

In what way can the work of Claude Cahun and Shannon O’Donnell be considered political?

Claude Cahun was an androgynous, surrealist photographer, widely known for her enigmatic self-portraits and her activism during the occupation of Jersey in World War Two. In her portraiture, Cahun presented herself as many different ‘characters’ in order to explore gender identity and the subconscious mind. MoMA states that Claude Cahun ‘…made self-portraits that emphasize the fluidity of gender, refusing to adhere to statically masculine or feminine characteristics.’. Shannon O’donnell is a contemporary photographer, whose work is heavily influenced by the likes of Cindy Sherman and Claude Cahun herself. O’donnell’s work focuses on the modern issues of our society, often attempting to deconstruct the idea of gender binary, which she believes is a socially-constructed concept. Both Cahun and O’donnells’ work can be considered highly political in terms of gender and identity politics.

Identity politics is the tendency for people of a particular race, religion or social background to form political alliances that move away from traditional party politics. Both Cahun and O’donnell are argued to have incorporated identity politics within their work, by rejecting social norms surrounding their gender.

O’donnell addresses multiple political topics throughout her work. In her series ‘Abort Mission’, she covers the culture war between religion and abortion. Her inspiration behind the project stemmed from her experience with anti-abortion protesters who she encountered praying outside of an abortion clinic, claiming that their protesting was relevant and important to their religion. Within the project, O’donnell incorporates visuals of the church and the protesters to highlight this. O’donnell has also been inspired by the suffragette movement, in turn creating her feminist project ‘The cat and the mouse’, which celebrates and informs the audience about the suffragette movement and the history of how women’s rights finally became equal to men in terms of voting. Much of O’donnell’s work focuses on modern, global issues, whereas Cahun focused majorly on her own identity and the socially construed binaries surrounding gender during the time.

Though not presented in her work, Cahun actively protested against the absurdity of warfare. Alongside her partner Marcel Moore, Cahun created a persona referred to as ‘Der Soldat Ohne Namen’ (‘The Soldier Without a Name’) in which she posed herself as an unknown German soldier with the sole intent to incite rebellion within the army. Cahun took a more active approach in comparison to O’donnell with her rebellion against gender and identity politics. Changing her name and appearance to become androgynous were highly valiant and insubordinate acts, as gender stereotypes during the time were enforced and highly normalised (especially towards women). With gender expression being more fluid in modern society, O’donnell’s work is less about rebellion against society but rather about expressing her own identity and pushing the idea that gender identity shouldn’t be confined to two strict binaries.

Overall, both Claude Cahun and Shannon O’donnell’s work is highly political however, you can argue that their work is most influential within their own timelines. For example, if Cahun’s work was released in this era, it may not have had the same impact or have been as shocking to its audience as it was during the 20th century. Much of modern society, especially the younger generations, comfortably and confidently mix male and female stereotyped appearances within their own identity. This, however, wasn’t normalised in Cahun’s time and so her work proved to be highly pivotal in developing identity politics. O’donnell’s work is highly relevant to modern issues and gender politics. She incorporates male and female gender aspects in her work and applies it to her identity, aiding in the modern push to deconstruct gender binaries.

Lesson TUE-FRI: In anticipation of the possibility of producing a newspaper based on the themes of LOVE & REBELLION we will this week focus on designing 4 versions of a newspaper spreads based on using movie stills from your film. Shannon O’Donnell uses the technique of selecting key frames from the timeline in Premier and presenting them as still-images. We will also print your spreads as final outcome for mounting.

SEQUENCE: Duane Michals.

Michals is an American photographer whose work makes innovative use of photo-sequences. The 1960s in which he worked was heavily influenced by photojournalism, which Michals manipulated to communicate narratives. The sequences he created take a frame-by-frame format. 

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Michals is grateful for never having studied at a photography school, as he feels he didn’t have to unlearn all the rules they teached. He claims that ‘I always tell students you’re either defined by the medium or you redefine the medium. And most people are defined by the medium, those are the rules you are taught… I simply turned the glove inside out…’. He claims to have redefined the medium by being the first person who, rather than capturing death by photographing a corpse or photographing in a funeral home or a cemetery, he used living people and characters to encapsulate this idea. Michals didn’t want to present the ‘facts’ about death, which is present in “Death Comes to the Old Lady.”. He claims that critics didn’t know what to write about it, that they viewed it as being flawed as there wasn’t a decisive moment.

Response:

Using raw footage from the film, I took screenshots of one scene that I felt could have metaphorical meaning beyond the actual actions of the subject. The subject’s face remains neutral throughout and so the main focus is on the removal of the jewelry. This can be interpreted as the subject removing the facade they present to the remainder of society and beginning to transform into the individual they are in private.

The layout of the piece is similar to Michals in the way it has the format of 4 on the top and 3 beneath. The process to create this involved the following steps:

1. Choosing and exporting 7 frames within premiere as TIFF files.
2. Using the rectangle frame tool to create seven frames the same size in InDesign.
3. Importing (Ctrl+D) each still photo in to the frame, adjusting the fitting and placing in the desired order.

1. MONTAGE: Select an appropriate set of movie stills and create a montage of layered images. You may to choose to work in Photoshop for more creativity and import into InDesign as one image (new document in Photoshop 420mm(h) x 280.5mm(w) in 300 dpi)

MONTAGE:

Create in photoshop and export as a TIFF file.

JUXTAPOSITION:

1. JUXTAPOSITION: Select 2 movie stills and juxtapose images opposite each others or layer them to create new meaning.

Response:

The juxtaposition shows a potential conflict between the subject and the social aspect of jewelry. Connotations of jewelry represent prestige, wealth and power, yet can also be seen as entirely materialistic, pointless and vain. The subject’s loose grip in on the ring (present in the shadow) implies ‘letting go’ of beauty standards. Additionally could show the incentive to let go but not putting it into practice as you cannot actually see the ring.

1. FULL–BLEED: Select one movie still as a full-bleed spread.

Follow these instructions:

Editing the footage

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Within Effect controls, I wanted to create a slow zoom into and out of chosen scenes, so as to increase the tension. These slow zooms paired well with the sound of our film to help create a narrative for our audience. The zooming in on stagnant clips allowed for focus on the audio and the sound effects within it, which created a sinister and disquieting mood.

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Editing the sound

I wanted the first scene to catch the viewers’ attention. To do this, I placed the sound so as to start before the first shot can be seen. The first part of the poem starts with two words ‘Twas brillig’, then a pause occurs. I placed it so that the shot appears on the end of the second word, which is pronounced with a plosive G. This breaks the tension that was built up during the exposition of the film.

I didn’t start the film at 0 seconds in order to build up tension before the first scene. The sound starts with a silence, and some static from our sound to catch the viewers attention. Additionally, the end of the film ends similarly to the exposition. The film cuts off before the sound does and the viewer is left with a black screen and a short couple of seconds of audio to build the tension, show the inner turmoil of the subject and leave the audience asking questions.

Naming the Film: The Pursuit of Social acceptance

In deciding the name of this film, we thought thought about conformity and confinement that people experience regardless of whether they present themselves to be accepted or rejected by society.

In accepting and following social norms and beauty standards, many feel confined to one appearance and one identity that conforms to societal ideals. This ‘pursuit’ results in acceptance but can also make individuals feel confined to one singular appearance that doesn’t fully represent who they are and what their identity is.

On the other hand, in rejecting and abolishing social norms, individuals are secluding themselves and removing themselves from the gender binaries of society. Though it sounds liberating that they can freely express their identity, it results in a different sense of confinement: that they are confined to their own identity, rejected by society and looked down upon for expressing themselves. This results in a need to gain validation and can often lead to people re-conforming to the standards they attempted to escape in the first place.

STORY+NARRATIVE: What is the narrative of your film? And how will you tell it?

In three words: Breaking social norms.

In a sentence: Rebelling against the societal beauty ideals and expectations of women by breaking stereotypes and ‘finding oneself’- essentially becoming comfortable with one’s identity.

In more detail: Firstly, I want to place emphasis on the audio we’re using. We aim to layer our video with a reading of Lewis Carroll’s: “The Jabberwocky”. The poem itself is filled with nonsense words and a fictional beast. For our film, the mythical beast is a representation of the fictitious and fabricated stereotypes for men and women that have been created by society. In the poem, the father figure warns his son against this beastly Jabberwocky, emphasising the danger of encountering and destroying it. With this knowledge, the son rebels and triumphs anyway by killing the beast. We want to use this to show how our subject has been being warned about rebelling against the beauty ideals and norms of society.

To show how our subject has been made ‘aware’, we are going to open their eyes to the ‘propaganda’ surrounding them. To achieve this, we’re planning to shoot a ‘scene’ where our subjects eye are being forced open, either by multiple hands or by specific props. I’m more confident that opening their eyes using hands is a more successful idea as the owner-less hands can represent people and powers within society forcing the subject to be ‘brain-washed’ and influenced by what they are watching.I want the focus of this scene to be on the eyes of the subject, possibly filmed in dim lighting. I aim to collage together different ‘propaganda’ (from TV, Instagram, Social media, Magazines etc) and film the reflection of this in the eye of the subject.

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To show our subject’s rebellion against typical beauty ideals, we’re incorporating the use of costume and props to alter their physical appearance. Combining both male and female outfits or wearing predominantly ‘masculine’ clothing to show the absurdity of assigning items of clothing with a gender. Additionally, props we may include would be boxing gloves and wraps as it’s not a typically feminine sport.

AUDIENCE: Who is it for?

We’re aiming our film towards the younger generation. As this generation is growing up, they are also figuring out their own identity and how they define themselves. We’re hoping to reach out to this group and change the way they view other people or themselves. By showing how easily social norms can be deconstructed, we hope to make our audience more open to the possibility of expressing themselves in a way that isn’t considered ‘normal’ by society.

CONTEXT: Who is your inspiration?

A lot of inspiration for this film is derived from the Dada movement and from contemporary photographer, Shannon O’Donnell. O’Donnell’s view on gender is relevant to our piece. She argues that the strict gender binary is a social construct and she attempts to show this in her film ‘That’s not the way the river flows’.

https://www.shannonodonnell.co.uk/a-short-film-tntwtrf

STORYBOARD: draft

THEME of film: Rebelling against the societal expectations towards women.

SUBJECT of film: Focusing mainly on personal identity as well as incorporating politics in the sense of how the capitalistic government controls what we are influenced by. 

INTENTIONS of film: In groups, we carried out a dice roll task. We were given three die and asked to roll them all at once. Each dice was linked to a set of words which corresponded with the number on the die. After the dice were rolled, we were left with the following three words: RISK, CHANCE and ABSURD. These were to be incorporated into our manifesto.

VISUALS of the film: Inspiration from O’Donnell on her process of ‘performing’ for the camera. Additionally, our group was inspired by how the portrayed the conflict between her and her personal identity.

SOUND within the film: A reading of the poem ‘The Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll. Although not from the Dada era, it can be considered as a nonsense poem. The subject within the poem is shown to have rebelled against the advice and warnings about the creature from his father and is later praised for this rebellion. We felt as though it would successfully tie in with our theme as the subject of our film is planning to rebel against the norms of society. We were hoping that the Jabberwocky would be a metaphor for society and the lack of control people have over their identity due to this.

TITLE ideas: Opening the third eye, The art of unlearning, Reconditioning the mind,

‘An open third eye allows you to take in light and details that you would otherwise miss, and this can be intense or overwhelming at first. Feeling like you are changing on a fundamental level, even if you struggle to put it into words.’

What is a manifesto?

In art: a manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement.

Additionally, we were looking to incorporate the idea of ‘Breaking the rules of reality’. This is present in our manifesto below.

Dadaism was an avant-garde movement established in response to the horrors of World War One. It was an anti-art movemtn which aimed to mark the disillusionment and absurdity of hte times they were living in. The dadaism movement came in multiple forms, ranging from art and music to fashion and poetry.

Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp was one of the pioneers of the Dada movement. He changed the view that art had to be based on an artefact or something physical. Dadaism changed ‘art’ to become a concept by destroying the very foundations it was established on.

Tristan Tzara

Tzara was a Romanian-born French poet known mainly as one of the founders of Dada. He produced numerous art pieces but his main contribution to the Dada movement was to publish manifestos that outlined the goals of Dada and spreading this to as wide of an audience as he could get. He arranged many vulgar and shocking performances at one of his local cafes using much deconstructed, nonsense language with the intention to shock his audience and a destroy all preconceived expectations they may have had about his performance.

Spontaneity exercise

Dada poetry rejected reason and logic and instead incorporated nonsense, irrationality, and intuition into its work.

Tzara’s 1920 manifesto proposed to cut words from a newspaper and randomly select these words to create poetry, a process which is often used for this type of poetry today.

In response to the spontaneous nature of Dadaism, we were given a task to create one of these Dadaist-style poems.

Historic movement

Women’s Suffrage movement

In response to these arrests, the imprisoned suffragettes often refused to pay their fines and went on hunger strike. This ultimately led to the Cat and Mouse Act which was passed in 1913, allowing for the early release of prisoners who had become so weak by hunger striking that they were at risk of death. However, this type of protest only proved successful for a limited time. Authorities implemented force-feeding into the prisons, whereby women who refused to eat were restrained while a tube was forced down their throat or up through their nose.

One of the most fateful incidents during the movement was the death of Emily Wilding Davidson at the Epsom Derby. The accident was broadcast live in which Davidson could be seen running out in front of the King’s horse in an attempt to attach a flag to it’s bridal. The act had failed horribly. Davidson was trampled by the horse and died four days later due to her extensive injuries. She became a martyr for the suffragettes and many applaud her for her commitment to the movement and admire her for her bravery.

When World War One commenced in 1914, the suffragette movement was suspended. However, progress was made in 1918, where women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote if they met certain property qualifications. Although it was a breakthrough, women’s rights were still not equal to those of men, who were given the right to vote at the age of 21. Furthermore, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 was passed, allowing women to be elected into Parliament. It took another decade before women were allowed to vote at 21 but the Representation of the People Act was passed in 1928, providing women with the same voting rights as men in the United Kingdom.

Modern Movement

The ‘Me Too’ Movement

It Focuses on the experiences of sexual violence survivors, has received a large response as sexual harassment and sexual assault impact the women in our society every day.

The movement became relatively prominent in 2017, when numerous high-profile actresses opened up about the sexual harassment they had experienced in the film industry. Many of these actresses spoke out about the harassment received from the film producer Harvey Weinstein. Alyssa Milano, specifically, acted as a catalyst for the movement after turning the phrase into the well known hashtag #MeToo.

Following this, the movement has provided solidarity for those who have experienced harassment of this sort by showing the world just how prominent sexual harassment is in our society and the movement helps to make these survivors aware that they’re not alone.

The media coverage of this movement has uncovered some heartbreaking statistics:

• In France, a person who makes a sexual harassment complaint at work is reprimanded or fired 40% of the time, while the accused person is typically not investigated or punished.
• In the United States, a 2016 report states that although 25–85% of women say they experience sexual harassment at work, few ever report the incidents, most commonly due to fear of reprisal.
• Evidence shows that in Japan, as little as 4% of rape victims report the crime, and the charges are often dropped half the time.

The movement has had a large global impact. After Milano tweeted #MeToo on October 15, 2017 it was used over  200,000 times by the end of the day and tweeted almost 500,000 times in 24 hours. Additionally, on Facebook, the hashtag was used over 4.7 million times on over 12 million posts in the first 24 hours. This led to many celebrities opening up about their experience of harassment, including men such as Terry Crews and James Van Der Beek.

Context

Claude Cahun (born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob) was an androgynous, surrealist and activist photographer, widely known for her enigmatic self-portraits, in which Cahun presented herself as many different personas. As a teenage Lucy Schwob, she rebelled against conventional ideas of beauty by shaving her head and wearing masculine clothing. She changed her name to the infamous and gender-neutral tag ‘Claude Cahun’ in 1917. Later on in her life, she displayed resistance to the German forces during the WWII occupation of Jersey.

Her resistance against these forces was admirable and still is today, especially as she came from a Jewish family. Alongside her partner, Cahun resisted against these troops and created a persona referred to as ‘Der Soldat Ohne Namen’ (‘The Soldier Without a Name’) in which she presented this persona as an unknown German soldier whose sole intent was to inspire rebellion within the army. She wrote leaflets pointing out the idiocy of war and ridiculing the actions of the German officers. These were either posted through the windows of German cars or left in cigarette packets, hoping that someone would pick them up.

However, after four years, Cahun and Moore were caught and arrested. They were then both sentenced to 6 years imprisonment and later death for inciting rebellion.

Cahun’s work

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Cahun’s work mainly explored gender identity and the subconscious mind. During the 1920s Cahun produced an astonishing number of self-portraits in various acts such as a pilot, doll, bodybuilder, vampire, angel, and Japanese puppet. A large number of her portraits, feature Cahun making direct eye contact with the camera, with her shaven head and often revealing only head and shoulders. This resulted in photos where the viewer could not clearly identify and define Cahun’s gender by the distinguishing features that would have otherwise been visible to the audience.

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For full-body portraits, Cahun often posed herself with purpose. Theatre became an important feature of Cahun’s work, as she aimed to avoid displaying any behaviour that could be associated with a gender and attempted to create images that blurred any possible gender indicators from the viewer.

Photo Analysis

Taken during the Jersey occupation, this portrait depicts Chaun dressed as an old woman. This guise is significant due to her rebellious role in the occupation. Cahun and her partner Moore disguised themselves as old women and often travelled to the town of St Helier, where they attempted to humiliate the German occupying forces through the use of notes and letters written by what they referred to themselves as ‘der Soldat ohne Namen’. The portrait shows Cahun holding a nazi cross between her teeth.

The treatment of this cross is significant to the portrait. The act of gripping this nazi symbol between her teeth acts as an act of defiance against the German officers, in turn stripping the cross of any symbolic power it holds as well as rendering it insignificant, as Cahun believed the acts of war were completely nonsensical and unjust. Her slight smirk and bold gaze past the camera implies the presence of a person or thing that has captured Cahun’s attention. This creates ambiguity. The viewer may question who she is glancing at. Perhaps it is one of the German officers themselves, this potentiality gives the viewer the idea that Cahun is fearless in her resistance. Additionally, her pose is confident. The positioning of her hands in her pocket also acts as a rebellion against the societal ideals of women during that era. The pose is relaxed and comfortable, lacking the elegance and grace expected by women at the time.

The lighting within the image is also significant. Taken in bright daylight, it amplifies the impression that Cahun is unafraid of displaying her rebellion. She would have been in public view, given the background and shadow of foliage suggests she is outside. This unrestricted display of discontent toward the German forces is commendable and extremely brave for someone of that time, especially considering her Jewish background and social position as a woman at the time.