Clare Rae, an artist from Melbourne, Australia who produces photographs and moving image works that interrogate representations of the female body via an exploration of the physical environment. Rae visited Jersey as part of the Archisle international artist-in-residence programme in 2017. She was researching the Claude Cahun archive, shooting new photography and film in Jersey, as well as running workshops. 

Her book ‘never standing on two feet’ was published by Perimeter editions in April 2018.

In her series, Never standing on two feet, Rae considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date.  Rae writes:

Like Cahun’s, my photographs depict my body in relation to place; in these instances sites of coastal geography and Jersey’s Neolithic ritual monuments. I enact a visual dialogue between the body and these environments, and test how their photographic histories impact upon contemporary engagements. Cahun used self-portraiture to subvert the dominance of the male gaze in photographic depictions of the female body in the landscape. My practice is invested in the feminist act of self-representation and I draw parallels between my performances of an expanding vocabulary of gesture and Cahun’s overtly performative images of the body expressing a multiplicity of identity. In this series, I tease out the interpretations inherent in landscape photography. I utilise gesture and the performing body to contrast and unsettle traditional representations of the female figure in the landscape

I like her work, she explores identity in a unique way. Rae creates her work to represent the female body, the strength and beauty of it. She says:

My practice at large is informed by feminist theory and considers the implications of representing a woman’s body (my own) in an inherently fetishizing medium. My aim with all my photographs is to subvert the dominant ways we depict women’s subjectivity.

Francesca Woodman

Another site of influence to Clare Rae is Francesca Woodman. At the age of thirteen Francesca Woodman took her first self-portrait. From then, up until her untimely death in 1981, aged just 22, she produced an extraordinary body of work. Comprising some 800 photographs, Woodman’s oeuvre is acclaimed for its singularity of style and range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her body was both the subject and object in her work.

Francesca Woodman is best known for photographing herself. But her pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. She is often nude or semi-nude and usually seen half hidden or obscured – sometimes by furniture, sometimes by slow exposures that blur her figure into a ghostly presence. These beautiful and yet unsettling images seem fleeting but also suggest a sense of timelessness

Woodman continuously explored and tested what she could do with photography. She challenged the idea that the camera fixes time and space – something that had always been seen as one of the fundamentals of photography. She playfully manipulated light, movement and photographic effects, and used carefully selected props, vintage clothing and decaying interiors to add a mysterious gothic atmosphere to the work.

This is my favourite photo of woodmans. you could say the focal point of the image is the chair with some item of clothing on it, but at the same time the centre of interest is the woman hanging from the door frame. It is majestic and moving, the woman is dressed in draped baggy clothing which could represent a low state of mind and innocence. However, that perspective is changed when you take into account she is hanging and holding herself up from the door frame, implying strength, independence and freedom. This is what Clare Rae meant when she said “My aim with all my photographs is to subvert the dominant ways we depict women’s subjectivity.”

I plan on trying to do a photoshoot inspired by Clare Rae and Francesca Woodman. I will use places and rooms in my house and different buildings, but also attempt to shoot outside as well, using the environment around me to explore identity.