The themes of ‘Femininity’ and ‘Masculinity’ are a binary opposite – a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Using binary opposites can be helpful when gathering ideas for a photographic project as it provides a set of boundaries to work in when creating photographs.
The term ‘binary opposition’ originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linguistics (scientific study of language).
Examples of other Binary Opposites:
Good and Evil, On and Off, Up and Down, Strong and Weak, Black and White, Hot and Cold
Themes surrounding Identity:
gender identity, cultural identity, social identity, geographical identity, political identity, lack of/loss of identity, stereotypes, prejudices, etc.
Definitions
Femininity: a set of qualities, attributes, behaviours and roles generally associated with women and girls.
Masculinity: a set of qualities, attributes, behaviours and roles generally associated with men and boys.
Masculinity and femininity can be understood as a social construct, and there is also some evidence that behaviours considered as either feminine or masculine are influenced by societal expectations and cultural factors, rather than being biologically driven. This means that a person’s upbringing and environment can influence their identity and way of expressing themselves.
Some photographers, such as Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman, challenge and play with the stereotypes and expectations of femininity and masculinity and examine the construction of identity.
Claude Cahun
Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer who was born on 25th October 1894 in Nantes, France and died on 8th December 1954 in Saint Helier, Jersey. Cahun referred to herself as ‘elle’ (she) in her writing, but also said that her actual gender was fluid. She began taking self-portraits as early as 1912 (aged 18), around 1914 she changed her name to Claude Cahun, and continued taking photos of herself throughout the 1930s. In Cahun’s work, she incorporated the visual aesthetics of Surrealism, which in photography, represents unconscious ideas, dreams, and emotions.