For my second photoshoot, I wanted to go ahead with the photograph ideas which include the mask prop. During this photoshoot, I drew a couple gender symbols on two of them. One mask contained just female gender symbols and the other included male, female and transgender symbols.

Contact sheets

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These are my flagged photos for the second photoshoot with the images to be kept and the images to reject and not use.

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Once again, I ended up ranking the photos on a star rating of 1 to 5 and afterwards I then colour coded which ones I wanted to use, possibly use or not use.

Best images to edit:

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For my first photoshoot, I wanted to start off with the photo ideas where I’m dressed as a male in a suit, female in a dress, mirror reflection photograph and finally the photo of me with the top surgery scars. I took all these photos of myself and most of them were from my waist upwards or shoulders up photographs.

Contact sheets

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These are my flagged images. First I pressed p (keep images) for the ones I preferred out of my entire selection then I pressed x (reject images) for the ones I didn’t want to use for my final images

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Best images to edit:

These are my best images that I have taken but they are all clearly unedited and haven’t been taken with filters because I wanted to see how they would turn out normally and in their original, raw state. Some of them are quite wonky and awkward looking but after I edit them, they’ll look a lot more interesting.

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First photograph – portrait photograph of me dressed up as a male (black suit and tie, beard etc.)

Second photography – portrait photograph of me dressed up as a female (dress, makeup, skirt etc.)

Third photograph – portrait photograph of me looking in the mirror dressed as a female but the reflection shows me dressed as a male (symbolises that society perceives me as a female as I look like one, but actually I’m a man and have always been one, just never knew it yet)

Fourth photograph – portrait photograph of me wearing a mask that has gender symbols drawn all over it, signifying my struggle with gender identity

Fifth photograph – a full body photograph of myself with my face blurred and scribbled out and top surgery scars being drawn under my chest (fully clothed – scars will be drawn onto my clothing)

Sixth photograph (may or may not do) – portrait photograph of myself with the use of the shutter speed technique (displaying the overwhelming sense of defeat and it being the final image of the set to show that the entire process of figuring out who I am, has consumed me and taken away who I really am)

I would like to be able to apply these photos in a series as to give off the impression of an overwhelming process that is involved in gender identity. I would like for it to be displayed as an incredible difficult journey where it eventually gets to the stage where you no longer understand what you might be and end up giving up on figuring out who you really are. Completely wiping out your loss of identity due to so many stressful experimental scenarios.

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Tableau is used to describe a painting or photograph in which characters are arranged for picturesque or dramatic effect and appear absorbed and completely unaware of the existence of the viewer

Tableau paintings were natural and true to life, and had the effect of walling off the observer from the drama taking place, transfixing the viewer like never before.

Tableau photography captures a very similar style to what interests me in photography. I love the use of props that create a cinematic feel to the piece and are composing a movie-like set to the image. The story it holds is particularly impressive and the choice of setting, props, cast, costumes etc. Is executed all for one image which I find very impressive.

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Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer best known for staging cinematic scenes of suburbia to dramatic effect. His surreal images are often melancholic, offering ambiguous narrative suggestions and blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality. Working with large production teams to scout and shoot his images, his photographs have become increasingly complex as if it were for a motion picture production, including its painstaking preparation of elaborate sets, lighting, and cast

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He is very well known for his incredible Tableau photography which is composed with an incredible amount of thought and detail. Every prop used has a meaning to the photo to give it a very cinematic feel. Almost like a movie set.

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Philip-Lorca diCorcia

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Philip-Lorca diCorcia is an American photographer whose work encompasses both documentary and staged photography, lending his large-scale colour prints a narrative mixture of truth and fiction. He stated “I think it’s a sense of disappointment after realizing that most of the time they’re being lied to,” diCorcia has observed of his audience’s reaction to ambiguous nature of his photographs. He also stated “And what medium has a stronger relationship to people’s idea of the truth than one that is supposed to be an accurate representation of reality?”

 His cinematic approach echoes Gregory Crewdson’s methodology, wherein the artist prepares the shots as if they were scenes in a film, as seen in his series Hustlers. The “dramatizing elements,” as the artist calls them, are what gives his images their narrative power

This artist takes a wide amount of inspiration from Gregory Crewdson who I find to be very intriguing with his photographs portraying realistic, cinematic-like scenes. They both produce very surreal settings within the art form itself, with the unusual use of props and location.

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Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph Eugene Meatyard lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating an impressive and enigmatic body of photographs. Meatyard’s creative circle included mystics and poets, such as Thomas Merton and Guy Davenport, as well as the photographers Cranston Ritchie and Van Deren Coke, who were mentors and fellow members of the Lexington Camera Club.

Meatyard’s work spanned many genres and experimented with new means of expression, from dreamlike portraits, often set in abandoned places, to multiple exposures, motion-blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. His best-known photography featured dolls and masks, or family, friends and neighbours pictured in abandoned buildings or in ordinary suburban backyards.

I have chosen him as I really like how surreal his photography looks. It captures a really unusual sense of reality and captures a creepy setting which i am particularly interested in. I especially like the inclusion of masks as they make the entire feel slightly more eerie.

Claude Cahun

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Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll. They created some of the most startlingly original and enigmatic photographic images of the twentieth century. Prefiguring by over seventy years many of the concerns explored by contemporary artists today, the importance of her work is increasingly recognised.

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. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today.  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.

She used her work to challenge notions of identity and gender with androgynous self-portraits that bring to life an array of characters. In one, she’s a bodybuilder holding barbells and hearts drawn on their cheeks; in another, she’s a lady of the manor swathed in velvet. Her work is a playful clash of the masculine and feminine, but also a critique of the societal norms she spent her life refusing to adhere to. Cahun believed that gender was transmutable. Assuming different identities was her forte, and she regularly performed in avant-garde theatre in 1920s Paris.

 “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.” – Claude Cahun

I particularly enjoy the way this photographer presents themself by their use of clothing choice, props, appearance and setting altogether to present gender identity experimentation.

Rosita Delfino

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“Photography is a dimension where pictures enhance the words and become means of expression of our inner world, through the filter of our eyes they have the power of changing the reality.” – Rosita Delfino

Rosita Delfino is an Italian photographer who captures quite surreal images and was emotionally involved by the great power of images in communicating and amazingly evoking words, alongside with the innermost expressions of the soul. She believed that only images can transform objective reality into a new creation giving voice to the individual secret world. An endless dialogue between appearing and being, a charming journey into women’s visions, where the body goes beyond space and time to plunge into a dreamlike dimension.

I chose this photographer as I enjoy her blurry images to create a very uncanny sense to the piece, implying a chaotic setting that comes off as looking very unsettling. I enjoy the use of overlapping images so that the concept looks way more hectic and overwhelming not just to people admiring these images, but also to the model in the photograph.

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Lara Gilks

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Lara Gilks is a photographer based in Wellington, New Zealand. She utilises the elements of nature, water, light, beauty, in the context of the dreamscape between two worlds. She explores that dreamscape through the themes of metamorphosis, mortality, escapism, ascension, peace, silence.

She tends to compose a series of images in a collection and gives them names such as “the backyard theatre”, “white lies”, “new work and single images” and many more.

One of her collections – the backyard theatre, she tend to use her backyard as the set and this was where she composed most of her photographs. She stated that “It is barren, cold and the props create tension. I focus on the characters – they are disguised, obscured – they taunt, spook and challenge the traditional sense of a backyard scene.”

I chose this artist as I particularly enjoyed the uncanny images she was producing where the models wore masks. I particularly like how disturbing the animal ones look as they give off a creepier atmosphere for the photograph. I love the use of masks in any form of art whether it be photographs or paintings, as they create a very intriguing piece, wanting others to wonder what’s hiding behind it.

Diane Arbus

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“We’ve all got an identity. You can’t avoid it. It’s what’s left when you take everything else away.” – Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus was an American photographer best known for her intimate black-and-white portraits. Arbus often photographed people on the fringes of society, including the mentally ill, transgender people, and circus performers.

Interested in probing questions of identity, Arbus’s Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey (1967), simultaneously captured the underlying differences and physical resemblance of twin sisters. “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know,” she once mused. 

I chose this artist as I loved the way each of her pieces were composed. From the settings, to the props, to the meaning behind the piece, everything catches my attention. The repetitive ominous field of each piece intrigues me a lot.

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My own analysis

As you can see from all the artists I’ve chosen as inspiration, they all tend to include masks as their focal piece for the photograph. I have a real interest in the idea of using this prop and what sense it gives off for the whole piece. It provides a compelling meaning as the model is using it as a way to hide their true self.

Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll. The Jersey Heritage Trust collection represents the largest repository of the artistic work of Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore, born as Suzanne Malherbe. Moore was known for being an illustrator and designer.

They had a creative partnership, as well as romantic. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and she was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis, who requisitioned their home. Cahun died in 1954 of ill health (some contribute this to her time in German captivity) and Moore killed herself in 1972. They  are both buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.

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. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today.  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.

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Clare Rae

Clare Rae from Melbourne, Australia visited Jersey as part of the Archisle international artist-in-residence programme last year. Clare  has been researching the Claude Cahun archive, shooting new photography and film in Jersey and contributing to the educational programme. Clare Rae produces photographs and moving image works that interrogate representations of the female body via an exploration of the physical environment.

Clare gave a artist talk contextualising her practice, covering recent projects that have engaged with notions of architecture and the body, and the role of performative photography in her work. Clare will discuss her research on these areas, specifically her interest in artists such as Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman and Australian performance artist Jill Orr. Clare will also discuss her photographic methodologies and practices, giving an analysis of her image making techniques, and final outcomes.

Clare Rae stated that “These photographs form part of an ongoing series of engagements with institutional space and architecture. Through my photographic performances I investigate specific gestures and movements undertaken within public and private spaces, considering the impacts on the body by educational and institutional authority. The photographic process of recording the body in space depicts my physical and experiential memory of these sites, which is often absurd or uncomfortable.”

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Image Comparison

Claude Cahun once did a photograph based around a landscape setting which is very similar to that of Clare Rae. Clare Rae may have been heavily inspired by this photograph, by Cahun, and taken it on as an inspirational reference for her compositions.

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As you can see, both artists have used boulders and rocks as the vocal point for the piece to correlate to the idea of identity. They are both shadowed by the large, jagged object and use it as an object to hide their true identity behind.

The tones are different between the two images but the inclusion of the photographer being combined with the rock, is very similar. As you can see, in this image, the rock in Claude’s photograph is placed on the side of the image so that the arms could be shown to their full extent when they extend outwards. However, the rock in Clare’s photograph, is very central but not quite the same size of Claude’s, which may indicate that Claude’s rock might have a deeper meaning to it due to its larger and more overwhelming size. Another difference that has been presented is that Claude has combined herself with the object itself whilst all that Clare uses the rock for, is to sit and pose on it. The combination that Claude presents may once again signify that the rock is more meaning due to her being one with it, she becomes a part of it, it’s who she is.

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My ideas

My ideas for how I would like to go ahead with my piece is I will be taking mainly black and white images as I enjoy the entire feel that it gives off. The lack of colour shows a lack of or a damaged identity. In the sense of gender identity, if the image is black and white, It could display that there is a clear struggle for figuring out who you really are. I would particularly like to explore either gender identity or lack/loss of identity with the concept of them being black and white, as I prefer a darker and more overwhelming approach to the topic.

I’m particularly inspired by Diane Arbus, Lara Gilks and Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s concepts which create very disturbing and unusual photographs which I am extremely interested in. Rosita Delfino and Claude Cahun are other good examples but they don’t hold exactly what I’m looking for compared to the others.

What is identity photography?

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.

Why is identity important in photography?

Defining your photographic identity will allow you to say who you are, what you want to be, and how you are to be perceived by others. This should be apparent to each viewer, regardless of whether they are a photographer or not. Your photographic identity will define how you will be perceived by the world around you.

How can identity by influenced by gender identity?

Our gender identity is influenced by our personal experiences throughout the socialization process, the people with whom we relate, and our own choices. Thus we must understand that gender roles and traits for men and women are dynamic. These affect who we are as people and how we want to present ourselves.

what is gender identity?

Gender identity is the personal sense of one’s own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person’s assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the individual’s gender identity.

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