To what extent have cindy sherman and Claude Cahun explored the male (photographic) gaze in their work?
“In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness”
-Laura Mulvey
The male gaze. The term the male gaze is referring to Laura Mulvey’s feminist theory where she discussed how women are seen as objects for men’s visual pleasure. This is present within society however it is magnified through the media. A prominent example of it would have to be Marilyn Monroe specifically in River Of No Return from 1954 where the first few shots of her in the saloon focus purely on her body and then her seductively resting on the piano. Similarly, Tom Ford’s advertisement for their first male fragrance in 2007 featured a woman’s bare chest with a perfume bottle in between her cleavage and another with a perfume bottle placed in front of her groin. Its clear that the male gaze has been evident and used for many years and has not appeared to stop.
However, artists like Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman challenge these harmful stereotypes and portray a different perspective of the female experience. Cindy Sherman focused on identity, gender roles, and stereotypes. Similarly, Claude Cahun questioned identity and gender but they used aspects of surrealism in their work. I believe that their work and their message are still important, relevant, and still needed. I am exploring similar themes within my own work as I believe it is important to highlight the issue of the male gaze. I’m planning on showing this by creating cracked effect for the models faces. I want to use some of the usual conventions similar to what Cindy Sherman created however by creating this cracked makeup on my models face I’m hoping it can show her she is breaking from within and the objectification she’s facing is ultimately breaking her.
I believe feminism is such an important topic as the patriarchy affects everyone in society. Feminism tends to have a bad stigma around it which could be due to the lack of education around real feminism. Society has tainted the message of feminism many people think it centred around wanting women to be superior to men which is not the case. The first feminist movement (which can be considered the first wave of feminism) took place during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was centred around women’s suffrage and giving more opportunities to women as during that time women were seen as inferior to men, they weren’t able to have their bank accounts, they weren’t allowed to vote even after that law was lifted the only women who were married could vote as well as women of colour were still unable to vote whether they were married or not. There have now been around seven waves of feminism each one carrying on the previous message but improving it through new ways. For example, the main difference between third and fourth-wave feminism is fourth wave wants to focus more on technology and social media so spreading your knowledge and fighting through social media. However, very recently it appears that as a society we seem to be back peddling as of January 20th, 2025 Donald Trump is president of America once again and has been vocal about his opinion surrounding abortion rights. Women finally got the right to have control over what happens to their bodily autonomy in 1973. However, since President Trump has been elected people are scared that once again we will have these rights stripped away from us.
Due to this, we may see a resurgence in feminist art. It is said that feminist art started in the late 1960’s to the 70’s it was created to highlight and display the inequalities and the challenges that women were having to face at the time. Art was originally a male-dominated area as historically women were supposed to be caregivers, mothers, etc… Women didn’t often get the chance to attend art schools as men did. They also were not allowed to partake in more taboo styles of art like nude portraits as it was deemed inappropriate for women. In order for women to be able to create art they often had to be wealthy and get taught by other male family members. A great example of this would be Anna Claypoole both Anna and her sister were the first women elected academicians of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
A photographer who was renowned for their work centred around feminism and the male gaze would be Cindy Sherman. She rose to fame during the mid to late 1970’s with her “Untitled Film Stills” where she produced 70 black and white stills centred around her portraying these different characters. She produced a depiction of a working woman, a housewife, etc… This can be linked to Judith Butler’s ideas of Gender performativity where she discusses how gender is based on repetition and rituals within society. The idea that gender is not fixed but is unstable and the notion of gender that gets pushed on people during infancy is in fact a myth. Similarly, Cindy Sherman discusses how she took inspiration for her work from the phrase “male gaze” as she felt that the media only portrayed women from a heterosexual viewpoint and it tended to reduce women to being objects. You can see how this impacted her work as she tried to challenge these gender-driven stereotypes by not romanticizing or glorifying them and instead exposing them. She does this very successfully, her images tend to be quite simple and she is always the model which I believe makes it more effective as she always has the same quite flat and unreadable expression on her face in all the photographs making them appear a lot more superficial as you can not tell how the model/women within the image is feeling. I also think by Cindy Sherman being both the model and the photographer for her pictures I believe makes them more impactful as she has all the power in the situation, she isn’t affected by the male gaze which will often occur subconsciously or not because it is so heavily ingrained into society but because she can control every aspect she tried to prevent that.
For example, in image no. 10, Cindy is playing the ‘role’ of a traditional 20th century housewife. She is depicted crouching on the kitchen floor alongside a broken, spilled shopping bag. What Sherman achieves through this comment on female stereotypes is nothing less than protesting the traditional roles of women in that time period. Women in this era were restricted and categorized to act and be a certain way; cooking and cleaning for the kids and husband, and overall being the invisible ‘caretaker’ to what would’ve been an ungrateful family. This concept is solidified in her lack of direct address, her melancholic, distant gaze leaves the audience questioning her real personality; who she is behind the ‘role’ of a housewife. Visually you can tell she was inspired by the 20th century from her outfit to her hair and makeup which is effective for creating the atmosphere of the role she is meant to play as being a housewife was one of the only roles for women during the 20th century until a little later when the suffragette movement started to grow and women started to get into more occupation fields but it was only around 20% of all women at the time who were working.
Similarly, Claude Cahun is a great example of an artist who challenges harmful stereotypes and creates thought-provoking feminist photography. Even before creating they started to explore art and photography Cahun started to push the boundaries with feminism and gender during their childhood Claude Cahun delved into the idea of being non-binary and going by they/them pronouns which clearly influences their work today through their differing characters some presenting more masculine some more feminine. They tended to focus on gender and more specifically the fluidity of gender. Claude Chaun’s work is contradictory to Cindy Sherman’s work focuses on the stereotypes to challenge them instead Claude Cahun uses elaborate props and fashion to convey new a different ideas about gender. It is evident within their work that they stray far away from the male gaze all of their work appears to be quite androgynous and doesn’t fit the beauty standard. However, like Cindy Sherman all of Claude’s work are self-portraits so they’re taking away the power from the audience by being in control.
For instance, the image ‘I am in training don’t kiss me’ holds the title as one of Cahun’s most famous pieces of work. In the picture they have short hair, evident in how Claude makes a point of distancing herself from the male gaze and alongside it, the stereotype that women must have thick, long hair in order to be deemed attractive by society. Similarly Cahun appears to be holding a pantomime barbell which continues to challenge stereotypes as its often said that women should be dainty and delicate and not strong, powerful and capable to do the same things as men. Additionally, Claude’s facial expression holds power and significance. Specifically, in the direct address to the audience, Cahun comes across as very intimidating and, as a result, holds power over the viewer, positioning herself at a higher status. In addition, they wrote the title of the picture on their shirt which emphasises their message of “don’t kiss me” demonstrating that they don’t want to be sexualized through her photo.
Ultimately, both Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman have created incredible work which pushed against boundaries, challenged stereotypes, and helped advocate for change. Claude Cahun has effectively helped push the boundaries of gender and gender performativity, and Cindy Sherman challenged the harmful stereotypes which often suppress women. An aspect of both of their work that I am interested in exploring is their use of facial expressions in their photos. Both Cindy Sherman and Claude Cahun use quite deadpan facial expressions however, unlike Cindy Sherman, Claude Cahun uses direct address, which I find comes off as very powerful and demanding, so I would like to experiment with that within my work.