What: My friends wore feminine clothing and I took pictures of around my garden e.g Them around my pond, on my bench, with some flowers and on my swing.
How: Using time priority on the camera.
Why: To respond to the theme of femininity
Photoshoot 2
Where: Jersey, in my garage
When: mid day
What: I took pictures of my brother and his friend lifting weights and working out in my shed.
How: Using time priority on the camera and experimenting with the flash.
Born October 25, 1894, Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob was a French surrealist photographer who explored gender identity and expression through their work. After attending the University of Paris, Sorbonne, she started creating self portraits in 1912 when she was 18 years old. In the early 1920s, she switched to the gender neutral name Claude Cahun after previously changing their name three times. She moved to Jersey in the late 1930s where her and her step-sister/lover disguised as non-Jews while producing anti-Nazi propaganda. Her work was lost and forgotten after World War two but we rediscovered and brought to popularity in the 1990s.
“Under this mask, another mask, I will never be finished removing all these faces.”
– Claude Cahun
She cut her hair very short around 1915 and started taking photos of herself on a neutral background dressed either as a sailor, a sportsman, or in men’s suit, this was the start of her photography of her self identity. Claude Cahun loved repeated patterns and often used doubling and reflection to question and explore gender or identity. She also loved self portraits and being able to show off her different personalities and identities through her photography.
“You could call her transgressive or you could call her a cross dressing Man Ray with surrealist tendencies.”
I wanted to attempt to showcase one of my current personal struggles involving my health in this shoot and contrast it with how I was beforehand. To achieve this, I’d bought a costume from a party shop that looked similar to a hospital gown and borrowed a friend’s helmet.
I took these images of myself in the studio, using different camera settings to achieve different effects, such as the long exposures that I shot. The lighting was set up so that it would create harsher shadows on the left-hand side of the image, and I think it ended up looking better in the photographs where I was wearing the jacket and helmet, which was a shame as I was trying to recreate the harsh lighting that hospitals often have.
These are my final shots for this shoot. I plan to use maybe two or three for the mock exam, the images of me in the hospital gown in particular – as that was the purpose of this shoot. I might do a smaller reshoot in my own time to create a matching photograph when it comes to the angle and pose I’m stood in, so I can combine the two images either digitally or after printing to emphasise the effect that I want from this.
What is femininity? qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of women or girls.
What is masculinity? qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men or boys.
The stereotypical thoughts about women are generalised into a category that portrays beauty and elegance. Although we are currently in a time of equality and opposition to sexism, as a society we have set ideas about what each gender is. The common idea of a woman is expected to have small body features, natural beauty, long hair and to be seen as subordinate to men. This stereotype is easily found on the internet and presents society’s set perceptions.
However woman have the possibility to be the complete opposite of what they are ‘meant’ to be. Claude Cahun shows this in their work where they test the stereotypical gender roles through photography with their partner Marcel Moore. With their shaven head and male attire defying conventical ideals of beauty and femininity, and their direct resistance of the occupying forces, Claud showed how genders were able to experiment. Expressing a gender-nonconforming identity, this was not in popular use at the time and caused difficulty for them. Moving to Jersey in 1937 with their partner (and stepsister), they lived in St Brelade and enjoyed a quieter life. However, when the Germans invaded in 1940s they were disrupted. Claud and Moore decided to create a two-person resistance campaign bent on inciting rebellion and dissension amongst German troops. They would place messages in cigarette packets and in car windows of German soldiers with messages on in hope to inspire rebellion from within the army. They were caught four years later and given a sentence of six years in prison and a death sentence, however the death sentences were commuted and they were both let out when Jersey was liberated in 1945.
Gender and identity can be influenced by place, upbringing, geography and more. I have chosen to focus on femininity as there is a loss of identity for women across the world. An example is in Kabul, Afghanistan. Since the Taliban took over in 1996 women in Afghanistan have been under strict rule and prosecuted for simple things such as walking alone in public. Part of the Taliban’s rule is for women to wear full burquas, covering their body and face. This shows how geography and religion can take away identity.
Winston Churchill stated ‘We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us’. In 2017, surveys undertaken by scientists at the University of Surrey for the National Trust revealed that ‘meaningful places’ played a key role in shaping people’s identity, across all ages; 67% of younger people said their meaningful place has shaped who they are. This clearly shows that ‘place’ is a key aspect to a persons identity. I might investigate this in my photoshoot by using household items and rooms. The idea that our surroundings can effect our feelings and behaviours as well as identify has been recognised for a long time, but was formally recognised with the rise of the field of environmental psychology in the 1970s. Since then, the interrelation between place and society has been explored by many writers and thinkers.
There are many other things that san affect identity such as cultural identity, social identity, political identity, loss of identity, stereotypes and more. However in my work, where I will focus on femininity, I want to show the loss of identity through women in todays society.
For this photo shoot, I will base my work off of Claude Cahun and Frida Kahlo. I will get my sister to wear a mix of feminine clothing (e.g. skirt) and masculine clothing (e.g. suits) which links back to the painting of Frida Kahlo in a suit and the work of Claude Cahun.
Photoshoot 2:
For this shoot I will base my work off of Justine Kurland and her early images when she took photos of Alyssum. I will go to a rural area and take photos of my sister, replicating the work of Kurland.
