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.

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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.

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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.

Contact Sheets

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Edited Photos

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Edits

Photos and edits in black and white:

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Diamond Cameo

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Edits in Photoshop:

How I did a vignette edit in Photoshop:

Henry Mullins was a photographer who is best known for producing over 9000 portraits of Jersey islanders from 1853 to 1873 at a time when the population was around 55,000. Henry Mullins started working in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, where he set up a studio and would photograph Jersey political elite, mercantile families, military officers and professional classes. In the record of Mullin’s work, he placed his subjects in a social hierarchy and it is highly politicised.

The portraits taken by Henry Mullins were printed on a carte de visite as a small albumen print, which was a thin paper photograph mounted onto a thicker paper card, and he mounted these prints into an album.

The card photographs became immensely popular because of the small size and affordable reproducibility, and cartes de visite were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s.

Contact Sheets

Edits

Rembrandt

Before and afters and what edits I did:

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Butterfly

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Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro lighting (Italian for “lightdark”) is a technique within portrait photography which utilises a low-key lighting setup to achieve contrast between the subject and a dark background to create additional depth.

Chiaroscuro typically provides a high contrast between light and dark and a sense of drama and intensity which remains striking today. This technique emphasises the subject and features by drawing the eye to the subject, and creates a three-dimensional quality in photographs.

History of Chiaroscuro Lighting

Chiaroscuro lighting originated in the Renaissance period but is most notably associated with Baroque art. This technique first appeared in the 15th century, but true chiaroscuro developed during the 16th century, in Mannerism and in Baroque art. Chiaroscuro in film: Film noir (French for “black film”), is a cinematic term is generally regarded as originating from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.

Chiaroscuro Lighting Setup

Chiaroscuro lighting is created by using one key light and a reflector that reflects the key light back onto the subject.

Butterfly lighting is a technique within portrait photography which refers to when the key light is placed above and pointing down on the subject’s face, which creates a dramatic shadow under the nose and chin that resembles a butterfly and defines the contours of the face.

Butterfly lighting is primarily used in studio settings, and it is one of the most common lighting setups. Butterfly lighting is also called ‘paramount lighting’ or ‘glamour lighting’.

History of Butterfly Lighting

Butterfly lighting dates back to some of the earliest glamour shots. This technique was first used by Josef von Sternberg, a Hollywood director who is most known for his work with Marlene Dietrich, in the 1930s. Sternberg used butterfly lighting to create a sense of mystery around Dietrich’s character, and this lighting has been used in portraiture ever since.

Butterfly Lighting Setup

Butterfly lighting is created by positioning the main light directly in line with the subject’s face and the camera, with the main light above and facing down on the subject. Most photos which use butterfly lighting have the model facing forward. A reflector can be placed below the subject to bounce light back up into the face if the shadows are too deep.

Rembrandt lighting, named after Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, is a technique within portrait photography which refers to the way of lighting a face so that an upside-down light triangle appears under the eyes of the subject.

Using Rembrandt lighting instantly creates contrast and shadows in a photograph. The main characteristic of this style of lighting is the triangle of light which appears beneath the subject’s eye, used to draw the viewer’s attention to it.

History of Rembrandt Lighting

Rembrandt lighting was an effect created in the early 20th century in Hollywood by film director Cecil B. DeMille, who introduced spotlights to create more realistic effects of light and shadow into the studio lighting setup. This lighting effect has become widely used in promotional photographs of film stars, because of its ability to show film stars in a dramatic and eye-catching way.

Rembrandt Lighting Setup

Rembrandt lighting is created by positioning the light source at a 40 to 45 degree angle and higher than the subject. Both flashlights and continuous lights are used for this style of lighting. The type of lens used for Rembrandt lighting is 35mm or 50mm. A 50mm lens works nicely for portraits and will give a nice depth of field if you are shooting at a shallow aperture, whilst a 35mm lens will have a wider point of view and is good to fit more of the subject than just the head and shoulders.

Sian Davey’s photography explores the psychological, social and political surroundings of herself and the people around her. Davey was born in Brighton in 1964. She studied Fine Art painting at Bath Academy of Fine Art in 1985. She was a psychotherapist for fifteen years before becoming a photographer, and her training in psychotherapy fundamentally informs and inspires her work, which often feels intimate and features themes of depression and grief.

Many of Sian Davey’s photographs are environmental portraits, which tell a story about the subject’s life and usual location. For example, in her project ‘Martha’ she has photographed her step-daughter in various locations, either by herself or in groups of her friends.

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Image Analysis

This is a digital photo by the photographer Sian Davey. There are 5 subjects in this photograph. The focal point is the person sitting on the bed in the foreground, and the composition follows the rule of thirds. In this image, the lighting appears to be natural daylight, creeping in from the window in the background. Some parts of the photo are overexposed, for example, the subject closest to the window, whilst some are underexposed. The depth of field is shallow, as the background and midground is blurred. The shutter speed appears to be fast at around 1/250, the image is a bit grainy, so I believe the ISO is around 1600.

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This is a digital photo by the photographer Sian Davey. The focal point is the 1 subject in this photograph, who is holding a newspaper and is sitting on a moving vehicle. This composition follows the rule of thirds. In this image, the light source appears to be strong and heavily contrasting natural daylight from the window on the left of the photograph. The depth of field is shallow, as the background and midground is blurred. To represent the movement of the vehicle the subject is sitting in, there is a horizontal motion blur, obstructing the details in shadowed areas even further. Because of this, I believe the shutter speed is slower and around 1/30, and the ISO is around 100.

An environmental portrait is a portrait taken of a subject depicting them in their usual environment, for example, their home or workplace. This typically gives insight to the subject’s surroundings and life.

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Environmental portraits aim to portray a real, authentic representation of the subject being photographed by including parts of their daily life such as their home, surroundings, place of interest, their workplace, and more. These photographs require planning, as to make the composition represent and capture the subject honestly within a setting which reflects the subject’s usual environment which holds meaning and a story. Aspects of the subjects being photographed shine through in this type of photography, giving insight on their life and personality, they can include one or more subject in them. They are different from studio portraits which usually have simpler backgrounds and compositions, usually comprised of a plain background to focus more on the subject, and less on their life.

Emphasizing elements such as line, colour, shape, texture, and other aspects rather than the subject matter, the work of the photographers Walker Evans and Darren Harvey-Regan are examples of formalism within photography.

Walker Evans

Walker Evans was an American photographer born 3rd November, 1903 and died 10th April, 1975. He was one of the leading photographers in in the history of American documentary photography. Evans had a great influence towards the evolution of ambitious photography during the second half of the 20th century. He began taking photographs in the late 1920s on a European trip, and published his first images in 1920 upon returning to New York.

The portfolio ‘Beauties of the Common Tool” by Walker Evans was published in 1955, where Evans appreciated the common tool and displayed them on their own. These photographs were taken of the common tools suspended behind a plain backgrounds. These photographs were taken in greyscale, eliminating the distractions that the colour on the tool may bring, and fully focusing on these objects for what they are.

Many photographs by Walker Evans were taken on a 8×10 inch view camera. The years 1935-36 were ones of highly productivity and accomplishment for Evans, as this is where he documented the effects of The Great Depression whilst working a a photojournalist, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration. He has described his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are “literate, authoritative, transcendent”.

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Darren Harvey-Regan

Darren Harvey-Regan is a photographer born in 1974 in the United Kingdom. He is interested in the concept that photographs exist not only to show things, but also to become physical objects themselves. As shown in the photograph above, he cut matching ordinary tools in half and then joined these halves together, creating a unique and bizarre object.

Darren Harvey-Regan graduated from the Royal College of art. His work has been displayed internationally in exhibitions and publications, and also is part of the permanent photography collection at the V&A Museum in London. Through his photographs, he aims to work in the liminal space where flat representation ends, and three-dimensional object begins.

Walker Evans’ work hugely influenced Darren Harvey-Regan, and both artists had great attention to detail to their choosing of objects, composition, lighting and exposure values. However, despite the clear similarities between these two artists, there are a few differences also. For example, Walker Evans photographs common objects without altering their appearance, whilst Darren Harvey-Regan does.

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Formalism photoshoot – contact sheets

Contact sheets with edits:

My photos before and after editing:

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Final Images

I edited my photos in greyscale, with inspiration from Walker Evans and Darren Harvey-Regan. Whilst editing, I focused on the main elements of formalism and emphasized those aspects of the photographs.