Identity is what sets an individual apart from those surrounding them and is influenced of by a persons environment, upbringing, gender, culture and more. These factors can change how people think of others and themselves which can also lead to a lack of identity where an individual may question who they are and may feel disconnected from who they are as a person. All of these factors can affect how a person dresses/acts towards others due to their personal experience throughout life.

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Claude Cahun [1894-1954]

Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer who challenged identity, gender and social norms by taking androgynous self-portraits, looking drastically different in each portrait due to the characters they portrayed in each photoshoot. They embraced gender fluidity in their work by dressing up in different clothing [most of which society wouldn’t have accepted back then] and would pose in interesting ways, making their work easily recognisable due to their artistic flare.

“Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”^[4]

– Claude Cahun

Angela Kelly

Angela Kelly is an Irish photographer whose work focuses on documenting women and exploring historical places. I will be taking inspiration from some of her early work, specifically her collection ‘Woman’s Identity’. In this collection, she takes a variety of self portraits, all in black and white, and focuses on how she’s changed over a period of 5 years both in her work and mind as she becomes a photographer and feminist.

“The visual history of women is an incomplete record. If we don’t make a record of our lives it’s as if we didn’t exist.” – Angela Kelly, July 1987

Francesca Stern Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Many of her photographs show women, blurred, merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured.

She often used slow exposure that blurs her images into ghostly figures. Her images have an unsettling yet timeless feel to them which makes them more eye catching.

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She was influenced particularly the photographs of Man Ray and Claude Cahun. This can be seen in the themes and style of her work. She developed her ideas and skills as a student at Rhode Island School of Design.

mood board

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mind map

Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer and sculptor born in 1894 she was best known for her self portraits which play around with the theme of her gender identity. Her work is described as political and personal she worked in jersey during her life and produced many unsettling yet eye catching photos.

Image analysis

For this photoshoot me and my friend used the studio in order to get blurry pictures. We did this by taking images using a tripod and a slow shutter speed, which allowed more light in and created the blurry effect. Most of the images were taken from the shoulders up and in black and white however, I also took some in colour to contrast the black and white ones.

Contact Sheets:

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Best Images:

These are my best images because I like how they have turned out using the slow shutter speed (I think the blurry effect looks interesting and it also makes it kind of hard to see me and my features, which I like). Because these images are similar, I think they will look good together later on.

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Identity means the fact of being or knowing who a person is or the set of qualities that make a person or group of people different from others. Identity is important in photography because it allows a photographer to tell a story about their subject, whether it be an obvious story or something deeper about their character.

Identity Photography

Photographs have been used in many different contexts to show identity or an aspect of identity. From a social media profile picture to a police mug shot, photographs can speak of identity in a way that is different from other artistic mediums. This is because a photograph is inextricably linked to reality. A photograph resembles the likeness of what appeared before the lens. So, in the case of a profile picture, family album
or mug shot, identity is based on the repetition of sameness that is evidenced by the image produced by the camera.

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However, photography can also be used to explore identity beneath the surface of physical attributes, delving into topics such as race, gender and heritage/ethnicity. Photographers such as Rineke Dijkstra look at topics such as geographical identity, and adolescence. Some photographers explore the idea of identity, like Danny Lowe and his self-portraits above. Also, photographers like Robert Frank and John Heartfield comment on racism and social identity.

My Ideas

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My first idea is to produce a series of images based on the work of one of my favourite photographers, Michelle Sank. Her photographs of individuals in their houses inspire me because of the way they show personal identity in such a raw way.

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My second idea is to produce collages like the work of Joachin Schmid, using images of my mum, nana and me. My aim with these collages is to show generational identity, through 3 generations of women. My last idea is to produce comparisons of these 3 generations, around the age of 17/ teenage years. I would collect images / take images of me, my mum and nana to show the differences and similarities between us at around the same age. I might incorporate the work of Joachin Schmid into this, combining this with my idea above to create different pictures of nowadays/older pictures.

Claude Cahun

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Claude Cahun was a Surrealist photographer whose work explored gender identity and the subconscious mind. “Under this mask, another mask,” the artist famously said. “I will never be finished removing all these faces.” – This phrase relates to the ideas of the multiple identities she conveyed in her photos, showcasing early examples of gender fluidity. She was born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France on October 25, 1894, to a prominent Jewish family. Her first recorded self-portraits are dated as early as 1912 when the artist was about 18. In the early 1920s, she would change her name to the gender-neutral Claude Cahun, which would be the third and last time the artist changed her name. Along with step-sister and lover Marcel Moor, she moved to Paris and fell into the midst of the Surrealist art scene.

The artist went on to collaborate with Man Ray as well as founding the left-wing group Contre Attaque alongside others. In the late 1930s, Moore and Cahun moved to Jersey where they, disguised as non-Jews, produced and distributed anti-Nazi propaganda. After being caught, imprisoned, and sentenced to death, they successfully escaped such a fate when Jersey was liberated by allies in 1945. Cahun is considered to be a ground-breaking artist who fully embraced her gender fluidity long before the term came into use.

Cahun and Moore employed a subversive avant-garde art practice as a form of resistance. For example, they created anti-nazi leaflets, and distributed them throughout Jersey, leaving them in strategic places. They signed the leaflets der Soldat Ohne Namen (“The Soldier with No Name”). Their activities were discovered in 1944, and—though they were not leaders of a large-scale resistance movement, as the Nazis believed—the two women were imprisoned and sentenced to death for undermining Nazi authority.

Much of their property, including their art, was confiscated. They were saved when the island was liberated in 1945. A photo of Cahun taken after their liberation shows her defiantly clenching a Nazi military badge in her teeth. Cahun and Moore remained in Jersey, continuing to produce work until Cahun died at age 60. Moore inherited her possessions and art, but Cahun’s legacy was nearly lost when Moore committed suicide in 1972 and all of Cahun’s work was auctioned off. 

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Since her death, Claude Cahun’s work has influenced the ideas of gender, sexuality, and identity, both in society, as well as for many singers and artists also. These artists include photographer Gillian Wearing, who took inspiration from Cahun’s idea of changing identities. These inspired Gillian Wearing’s “Secrets and lies” collection.

For this project, I will take pictures (black and white) linked to my own identity then make a book in order to make a little story about myself (or something like that). I’m going to use the studio because the lighting is better there and also use different backgrounds. I’m going to take my pictures using a slow shutter speed in order to make them blurry (like Francesca Woodman’s work). I’m also gonna try take close ups and maybe full body shots (like Angela Kelly). Most of my images are going to be taken in by room because I spend most of my time there and I’ll also take some pictures outside of my surroundings (probably at night).

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IDENTITY MOODBOARD

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Identity can be defined in different ways, such as, the qualities, personality and beliefs which distinguish a person. It can also be seen as the outside of a person other people can see, without knowing them, leading them to presume the identity they have.

IDENTITY IDEA MINDMAP

Identity can be influenced through many ways from family and friends all the way to the kind of clothes a person wears and the culture they come from. All these factors shown above in the mind map influence a persons identity. The factors shown above also affect different stereotypes and prejudices people have to another persons identity, such as the are they live in as well as the building they live in.

Claude Cahun

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Claude Cahun was a Surrealist photographer whose work explored gender identity and the subconscious mind. The artist’s self-portrait from 1928 epitomizes her attitude and style, as she stares defiantly at the camera in an outfit that looks neither conventionally masculine nor feminine. photos taken by Claude Cahun tend to be very dark and can portray very controversial topics.

Andrzej Steinbach

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Andrzej Steinbach was born in 1983 in Czarnkow, Poland, he lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Steinbach is interested in the signifiers of photographic portrayal and how our assumptions turn individuals into different identity’s and into different characters. Photos taken by Steinbach are mostly all black and white, and are very good at portraying the identity of the subject that has been photographed.

Introduction

Distinct from chronological age, “age identity” refers to a subjective, rhetorically constructed awareness of age. … As a social identity category, age identity includes the relative sense of feeling “young” or “old,” which does not necessarily coincide with chronological age.

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Above I have created a mood board, looking through many images in search for initial inspiration, to demonstrate how images can tell a story of heritage and age. These photographs above are a mixture of antique objects, old family photographs, photoshopped portraits and aged hands. I like how they all link together to illustrate the contrast between the young/ new and old. This has helped me visualise photographing the concept of age and now I can recreate these image with my own resources and taking and editing photos of my family members.

Kensuke Koike

Biography summary: Kensuke Koike was born in 1980 and was primarily inspired by the 1980s. The 1980s were an era of developing global capitalism, political upheaval, worldwide mass media, wealth discrepancies and distinctive music and fashion, characterised by hip hop and electronic pop music.

Using found objects like vintage postcards, Kensuke Koike works with archival images to create new narratives. Hear the Venice-based artist give insight into his sculptural works and his playful approach to image-making in this online discussion with art historian and curator Lena Fritsch. Linking to my idea of exploring age identity as I can link the idea of old images to illustrate the experience of ageing.

Born in Nagoya, Japan, Koike moved to Italy, pursuing studies. He graduated from Accademia di Belle Arti, Venice, Italy in 2004, and he spent the next three years further expanding his knowledge at the IUAV University, Faculty of Arts and Design in Venice.

Teresa Ruffino: How did you get interested in photography and art in the first place and why did you decide to move to Italy to study them? Kensuke Koike: I started using photography by chance and I chose to come to Italy to improve my knowledge of History of Art by being able to see it first-hand.

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How I would like to use this work for inspiration: Firstly Koike’s work is very eye catching and aesthetic, I really like the idea of combining many images/ portraits together to create a new piece of work, like creating a new person out of people that are related and connected to each other.

Furthermore, I know that I have many good old family images that I can use to create Koike’s work in my own style, adjusting the exposure of the monochromatic images to create high levels of contrast, then an either physically cutting and sticking to create new pieces of work, or using photoshop to make art like Koike’s. In addition, I could adapt his work, for example. the first image in this gallery of 6 could be remade with vertical instead of horizontal lines.