Claude cahun was a French artist, photographer, and writer who lived in the early 20th century. She was known for her self portraits and her exploration of gender identity and sexuality. she was also a member of the French Resistance during WW1 wand was imprisoned for her activities. Her work has been celebrated for its feminist and queer themes. She was born Lucy Sxhwob but kater changed her name to Claude Cahun. She lived most of her life in jersey where she created her most famous works. Her art mainly explored themes of gender identity, sexuality and self expression.
Throughout Cahuns life she challenged the stereotypes surrounding the ideas of masculinity and femininity by shaving her head and dressing in male attire to defy the traditional ideology about femininity and beauty in women. One of the main ways she portrayed her ambiguity was by choosing the name Claude, that in French could refer to either a man or a woman. She took the last name from her grandmother Mathilda Cahun. In some photos she portrayed herself as a woman, in some a man, and in other a bit of both.
My opinion
She is one of the main photographers that I am inspired by for my project about identity due to her ignoring the tyipical stereotypes of beauty and looking more at the meaning behind the photo and her intent behind it. Her work also gives more of an eary look which I am drawn to as it is unique compared to other photographers that I have looked at.
Claude Cahun (Formally known as Lucy Schwob), was a French photographer, best known for her self portraits and who moved to Jersey in 1937 with her partner and stepsister, Marcel Moore.
She was sentenced to death and had most of her work destroyed in 1944 for opposing the German occupation during World War Two, but she survived and lived until 1954 where she and her partner were both buried in St. Brelade’s churchyard.
Claude Cahun was gender fluid so she was neither male or female and didn’t associate herself with either, her work reflected this as she would exercise this idea:
In this photo she has shaved her head and is wearing overalls, which is typically what a “blue collar” male would wear, the bald head is seen as a masculine feature, which distorts her gender and makes it more complicated. A quote from her when asked about this photo was “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”.
She liked to challenge the norm of gender roles, for example, traditionally women were more seen as objects for male desire so she wanted to make her work not define, but to express and explore her identity, to be free from the dominant ideologies in our society.
Expanding on her photo above, the Technical side of the photo we can talk about is the Lighting. Her face is bright white which clashes with the black background. The Depth of Field appears to be rather short as we can see her quite close to the camera and the background looks like it’s not far behind her either and the Shutter Speed is clearly low as we can see two of her, she must have taken the photo and while the camera’s shutter was still open she moved and changed her position. Which created the effect we see now.
The Visual elements present in this photo are things like the Colour, being a black and white image, the photos two main colours are black and white. The Texture of the background has a sewn material look, which makes me think its a curtain or a piece of cloth pinned to the wall.
Clare Rae:
Clare Rae is an artist and photographer from Melbourne, Australia. She was researching Claude Cahun’s work and wanted to make something similar to it by producing her own album, “Never standing on two feet”:
She explained her work and wrote:
“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 will analyse this photo:
The Technical aspects seen in this image are the Lighting, the sky is bright but the ground is dark. It almost looks like they are clashing together. The Depth of Field is deep as it stretches down all the way through the bunker, more on the bunker is that the walls seen on both sides create a converging lines effect and even resembles rule of thirds a little.
Some Visual things are the Texture of the grass and moss, they add more detail in the photo and make it more sharp. You can see Lines along the bunker walls, which create more converging lines as they are leading the same way the walls are. Another thing is the Space between the objects seen in the photo, there is a wide gap between the walls at the front and back of the photo, and Rae is seen centred in the middle of the opening.
Rineke Dijkstra:
Rineke Dijkstra is a Dutch photographer who makes single portraits of people such as adolescents, clubbers, and soldiers.
These photos show bullfighters and a soldiers. The bullfighters have just fought and killed a bull, hence the blood on them and their torn and roughened up clothes. The soldier has dirt on his face and appears to be in a warzone, given the depressing colours behind him and expression on his face. These photos represent the violent nature and trauma men can go through, whether that be from fighting in wars or killing dangerous animals. Her work is similar to Cahun’s as it’s on gender representation and gender roles, but more for men and what’s expected from most men.
This photos Technical elements are the Depth of Field being close as it is a portrait showing the man’s upper half. The Lighting seems even throughout the image between the man and the background. The Visual elements are the Colours in the image, for example the man’s suits colour is similar to the background and contrasts with the shirt and tie, even with the splattered blood. His suit has a Texture that looks rough and hard, given it’s dried material look. A Conceptual element is story behind how he got the plaster on his neck, given that he is a bullfighter which means he gets involved in rough activity, It makes you wonder if he was perhaps scraped by the bull’s horn as he dodged it when it charged past him, or if he accidentally cut himself with his sword and is luckily still alive. He could’ve gotten a plaster not even from bullfighting, maybe from fighting something or someone else.
Another photographer, Nicolai Howalt makes similar photos but instead with boxers. He often shows a comparison between what they looked like before their fight and after:
Clare Rae is an Australian photographer who is inspired by feminist theory’s and aims to show and represent woman’s body’s and in some cases her own. She also aims to ‘subvert the dominant ways we depict women’s subjectivity.’ by show casing women in photoshoots by them in certain positions.
I am intrigued by this photoshoot as it is abstract and I haven’t really seen anything like this with the different positions and poses the subjects in the photos are doing. she uses the female body to create messages about who women present themselves.
Clare Rae is also inspired by the architecture behind and in every photograph. The series was captured in and around the RMIT University (life drawing studio, court room, design archive). She also had personal connections to the university as this is where her late father studied architecture.
Emotional response:
Every image that Clare Rae takes is abstract and unusual however very creative and shows how women can be delecate and fragile.
Visual:
Clare Rae’s images show women being careless while being in dangerous positions, which connotes the rebelliousness of them however, at the same time many of the women are seen holding onto something which shows they aren’t as carless as they are making out.
IDENTITY POLITICS is a term that describes a political approach wherein people of a particular religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factor form exclusive socio-political alliances, moving away from broad-based, coalitional politics to support and follow political movements that share a particular identifying quality with them. Its aim is to support and centre the concerns, agendas, and projects of particular groups, in accord with specific social and political changes.
Of course now there are many ongoing culture wars, due to diversity of peoples opinions and lack of tolerance and acceptance of different views. many of these revolve around identity politics, including race, religion, social class, gender, social background, sexual orientation or other identifying factors that are based upon these identities. as social or political activity is usually undertaken with the goal of rectifying injustices suffered by group members, this is because of differences or conflicts between their particular identity, misconceptions of their particular identity or the dominant identity or identities of a larger society.
identity politics also aim in the course of such activity to eliminate negative misrepresentations such as stereotypes of particular groups that have served to justify their members exclusion , exploitation, marginalization, oppression. identity politics also encompasses nationalist or separatist movements within particular countries and territories. identity politics is closely related to multiculturalism, which is the general view that cultural minority groups deserve respectful acknowledgment of their distinctive belief systems, values and ways of life.
identity politics developed around the 1980s and 1990s as a reaction to the perceived failure of liberal civil rights legislation, to eliminate identity-based inequities and injustices, such as racial and sexual discrimination. liberal ideals of equality such as equal rights, equality before the law, equality of opportunity were misguided and ultimately counterproductive because their transcendent nature that is their application to all persons, irrespective of identity, made it difficult in practice to justify policies designed to achieve greater social equity through direct assistance to historically oppressed and exploited groups.
A related criticism was that liberalism emphasis on identity-independent equality rendered it capable of recognizing only the most overt and obvious identity-based injustices, not those that were relatively indirect, subtle or systemic. defenders of liberalism and other critics argued in response that the continued pursuit of identity politics had led to a fracturing of oppressed and exploited populations into numerous inward-looking interest groups, whose different priorities obscured their different goals and challenges and prevented the kind of mass mobilization necessary to secure their basic rights.
in my opinion people should fight for equality and their personal freedom, however in some cases to get this result, many people are put in danger or put themselves in danger. many riots and protests have lead to destruction of buildings, public places , physical harm of others and occasionally even death. these movements have such big catastrophes in order to provoke the government to take action, they are more likely to notice and revaluate what needs to be fixed, rather than peaceful protests which won’t cause any damage but is less likely to be noticed as it isn’t as controversial. i believe everyone should be given the same opportunities and no one should experience any form of discrimination, however i also think this is very unlikely to happen, especially quickly, as there is always going to be people that get satisfaction through hate, and all people think differently to each other, meaning debates, fights and protest will keep on happening. there are aspects in many countries , where the law and society aren’t accepting of different people and their beliefs. respect should be taught to engage society and children to not judge others, because of these valued people turn opinionated and feel the need to peruse their negative opinions. in a society a higher class group has much more opportunities rather then a subordinate groups that have been decriminalised for centuries because of the patriarchal government. because there was no diversity in the people ruling the countries, the wrong opinions and views on certain people have been the “norm” for many years. this is why it is necessary to take action now and hopefully some things will change in the future.
In photography, as the movement of identity politics became more relevant, debates started to become more serious and people started to speak up, artists and photographers, songwriters and poets, all kinds of people decided to create work based, or inspired by identity, identity questioning, and making people question themselves. In photography there are many artists that even before the given period 1980-1990, when identity politics became popular, people before then were already making photographs questioning identity issues. one of many inspirational photographers is Claude Cahun, which was a writer and a photographer that said her actual gender was fluid. as she lived between 1894 – 8 December 1954, meaning a lot of the work she made was through world was 2.
Photographer Claude Cahun, “Self-Portrait.” From Bifur, Vol. 5, April 1930.
My photo shoot is going to be inspired by Claude Cahun and the image she created below i am going to do my own interpretation on this photo by using myself and my twin sister as a reflection of ourself’s as this will tie in with the idea of identity as some people see twins as one person not two separate individuals, especially when they are identical, the images will show even though two individuals are similar in may ways we are equally different in many ways as well.
Claude Cahun created this photo by using two separate photos (a collage) i am going to create mine by using one photo and also will take separate photos and edit them using photoshop to create one separate image.
I am going to do this photoshoot at home to show where we have grown up, i am also going to take photos of both of our rooms to show the differences and different styles we both have which will show a lot about our individual differences.
I am going to take the photos by using a tripod and the timer setting on the camera allowing us both to be in the frame at once.
This photo is also part of my inspiration for the poses and angles of the two females.
Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits. She defied the conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with her shaven head and male attire. She was challenging the politics of gender while exploring the means of her identity.
Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation.
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. These images could be seen as abnormal as she was going against the stereotypical view of females during that period. She was able to explore her identity by taking images, expressing herself in an artist way. She was able to take advantage of her unique facial features in order to mock and explore the significant differences society created between femininity and masculinity.
In Jones’ article on femininity she states ‘Cahun in order to flesh out Phelan’s idea, which gets at the core of how the subject relates to—and is established via—representation. The structure of exaggerated self-performance set up in the works I discuss here points to the profound duality of the photographic representation of the body’
This implies that Cahun was indeed using herself and body in order to represent the difference between what society states between masculinity and femininity. During that era there were strict rules and dominant stereotypes created by the public by defining how a female and male should act. However during this centuryJudith Butler gender theory states that ‘no means tied to material bodily facts but is solely and completely a social construction‘. This implies that now people are able to identify and represent themselves how they view themselves from their values.
Overall, i aim to take around highest 100 images for each location to give me a wide range of photos to select from.
WHERE?
Cliff paths
The woods
Fields
Rural areas
Surrounded by trees, flowers and grass
Studio – close ups
Bath – b&w
Why these specific places?
I have chosen these mainly ‘rural’ locations as they are surrounded with nature, my aim is to create the idea of being in the ‘middle of nowhere’. In the studio I plan to do close ups… and also ‘milk bath photography’ however still relating it to being surrounded by nature: Milk bath photography is a type of portrait photography that places subjects in a tub full of milky water, often with floating props like flowers, fruit, or greenery.
WHEN?
Whilst its sunny but not midday; more so late afternoon. The photoshoots not involving the environment can be whenever is suitable.
HOW? (EXPLANATION)
Using my artist reference Justine Kurland, I will recreate her images in the book ‘Girl Pictures’ in my previous blog posts it displays examples of her photography, and shows that the locations are mainly: cliff paths, the woods, fields and generally rural areas. By doing more research and also having my own idea of what id like to incorporate into this project of ‘femininity vs masculinity’ I’ve decided to do close up portraits in the studio using smudged makeup or ‘post crying makeup’ to challenge the ideology that when girls cry its seen sometimes as ‘pretty or aesthetic’. Referring to the bath photoshoot id like to create a similar message and meaning to the studio pictures i plan on doing. Having flowers in the milk bath, positioning the model to look as if she’s basically fully submerged in the water giving the message that she feels ‘weighed down’ and has no freedom yet still surrounded with beautiful things such as flowers to represent ‘purity’. I like this idea as the message/meaning can be perceived in several different ways making the image intriguing, giving it a deeper emotional meaning. However, the milk bath and studio shoots are more of an individual idea leaving out the artist reference.
‘political or social activity by or on behalf of a racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other group, usually undertaken with the goal of rectifying injustices suffered by group members because of differences or conflicts between their particular identity (or misconceptions of their particular identity) and the dominant identity (or identities) of a larger society.’ (https://www.britannica.com/topic/identity-politics)
Culture wars:
‘A culture war is a cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices. It commonly refers to topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values.’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war)
‘For [historian Tom Holland], the term culture war relates to the German word Kulturkampf, which described the clash between Bismarck’s government and the Catholic church in 1870s Prussia. It is therefore specifically a dispute between religious and secular forces. Certainly if we look at America, where the modern incarnation of the culture wars was first identified, the conflicts over abortion and gay marriage have been fought, at least by one side, from an explicitly religious perspective.’ (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/13/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-the-culture-wars-but-were-afraid-to-ask)
What are the positive/negative outcomes?
When looking at these issues, it is easy to see that they can bring about negative impact for whichever groups they affect, such as further divisions among the increasingly segregated sectors of society. However, there are also positive impacts because it allows for a far more widely revised democracy as more types of people are given a voice to aid and make change to their differing issues.
How does this link to the arts?
Art is an expression of the artist’s feelings, thoughts and opinions so it is only natural that this should include the manifestation of their political views. This is important as, throughout history, artists have used their medium to fight for what they believe in and create valuable work in the fabric of their nation, region or minority’s political history. One example of this is the emergence of the Dadaism movement as a reaction to the violence of the First World War.
A more modern example is the work of Keith Haring, who used his art to make statements on socially important issues such as the spread of HIV/AIDS (through his famous slogan Silence = Death), the use of nuclear weaponry, and the apartheid. His work forced people to talk about the issues and this is an integral characteristic of protest art.
“Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people” – Keith Haring.
Here are some examples of other protest artists that have used their work as a mouthpiece for their opinions and beliefs.
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Sherman went to Buffalo State College to study art in 1972. She soon found painting too restrictive and couldn’t see herself enjoying such an overly-traditional technique. Instead, she tried new methods. In 1977, she switched to photography and published her first series Untitled A-E. These black and white photographs were a series of self-portraits critiquing the American way of life. In them, Sherman disguised herself according to different stereotypes of American women (the businesswoman, housewife and seductress).
Cindy Sherman works play with female stereotypes. Masquerading as a myriad of characters, Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954) invents personas and tableaus that examine the construction of identity, the nature of representation, and the artifice of photography. To create her images, she assumes the multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, and stylist. Whether portraying a career girl, a blond bombshell, a fashion victim, a clown, or a society lady of a certain age, for over thirty-five years this relentlessly adventurous artist has created an eloquent and provocative body of work that resonates deeply in our visual culture.
Sherman did many collaborations with big makeup and clothes brands from MAC makeup Balenciaga to Marc Jacobs these brands wanted to do collaborations with Sherman to to her unique eye for her unconventional ways of capturing brands and going against the gender normalities within advertising, she did this by going against the stereotypes of the typical model she used herself and portrayed it as a parody by doing exagurated makeup which can be seen as clown like by audiences.
