Cindy Sherman

The art historical canon was heavily criticized for its lack of female artists and widespread use of stereotypical images of women. Some female artists began to use their work as a means of re-representing female identity and deconstructing prevailing cultural expectations of femininity. One of these was contemporary artists Cindy Sherman who, in her photographs, takes on the role of many female identities found throughout Western culture. These photographs portray struggles over women’s identity and the way we come to know and understand ourselves through culture, and can be critically analysed using feminist social constructionist theories that challenge the idea of a fixed femininity.

In Sherman’s Hollywood-like stills, she alters her identity using filmmaking tools such as costume, lighting, setting and composition

Sherman deliberately gave up the conventions of fashion photography, causing French vogue to ultimately reject the works for their magazine. However, other fashion editors and designers received her works enthusiastically.

In this photo it shows a woman in the kitchen, this is stereotyped as femininity as women were stereotyped to cook and care for themselves and the family etc. This would show challenging femininity in the 20th century because of how the woman is photographed. The shopping bag is ripped on the floor and the woman is picking it up.

Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer. Lucy took to the name, Claude Cahun in 1914. Cahun is best known as a writer and self-portraitist, who assumed a variety of performative personae

Cahun’s connection with Jersey began early, with childhood holidays spent in Jersey and Brittany. She was born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France to a wealthy Jewish family. But in her late teens and early twenties Cahun had been looking for a new, gender-neutral name for a while. She fixed on the name Claude Cahun in 1918. At that time she was in a same-sex relationship with Suzanne Malherbe, who used the name Marcel Moore. They had become step sisters in their mid-teens and at some point a closer relationship developed.

 Initially they found life in Jersey to be a ‘holiday without end.’ But with the prospect of a Nazi invasion of Jersey looking very likely in 1940, they refused to be evacuated back to England. Instead the women decided to mount an underground resistance campaign following the Nazi’s occupation of the Island in June 1940. Their campaign largely took the form of propaganda in the form of fake news sheets, authored by listening to the BBC on an illegal radio and then translated into German by Moore. These were left in places German soldiers might find them.

Cahun and Moore ended up in prison in St Helier and narrowly avoided a sentence of death. They remained in jail until 9 May 1945, the day Jersey was liberated. in late 1954, Cahun was taken into hospital and died on 8 December, aged 60. Moore lived on in Jersey until 1972, when she ended her own life.

This photograph to me, represents the challenge of normality of identity in the 20th century. I find this photo the most intriguing, as Claude Cahun shaved her head to challenge the gender roles and show her own way of self expression. In this photo Claude Cahun is presented in a very masculine way, the way she had positioned herself is very a very masculine pose but the patterned clothes and mirror add a feminine vibe to a masculine photo. The way she has positioned herself next to the mirror looking into the camera with the mirror reflecting her eyes to look away could add to the stereotype that men are confident and will look straight into your eyes and that women are more shy, timid and less confident than men.

Shannon O’Donnell

Background: Shannon is a talented individual who completed her A level studies and continued with a passion for photography and in fact has recently completed her BA (Hons), a degree in documentary photography at the university of South Wales. Her age and birth date is unknown as there is no evidence of that type of information.

During her 3-year degree, she developed a number of projects based around gender identities and constructions. Her work is quite known and in fact has a certain uniqueness and depth to it.

Shannon is an amazing artist. She approached her work with a performative approach where she explores the gendered experience which are both personal and within contemporary and historical capitalist Britain. Shannon has a variety of ways she shows her art, she presents her art through things like, audio, text, archival research, moving stills and of course photography. She was the former Digitisation and Outreach Coordinator at the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive and current Digitisation and Cataloguing Officer at Jersey Heritage

Photo case study

Claude Cahun

Background Claude Cahun was born in 25th of October 1894, Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France into a wealthy jewish family. Cahun was incredible, not only was she an artist but she was a photographer and writer. She is best known for her unique self portraits where she creates a range of personas, some include, weight lifter, doll and aviator. Cahun explored and questioned gender, identity and subconscious of mind, particularly position of women. She did this through her art and in the way she spent her life.

Later, in her late teens/early twenties, Cahun had been looking for a gender neutral name. Soon she changed her name to Claude Cahun in 1918.

Claude, soon moved to Jersey Channel Island, with her lover, Marcel Moore and her stepsister. Suddenly she was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944, accused of activities in the resistance during the occupations. Luckily, Cahun survived and nearly reached to the point where she was forgotten until in the 1980s where she started to be recognised, once again for her art. Lots of Cahun and her lovers work was destroyed by the Nazis due to them requisitioning their home.

Unfortunately, Cahun died in 1954 from ill health. It was rumoured that her time in captivity in German might have been partially to blame for her death. Later, Cahun lover, Moore killed herself in 1972. Both Cahun and Moore are peacefully buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.

Photo case study:

Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin, full name Nancy Goldin who was born September 12, 1953 is an American photographer and activist. Her work regularly explores moments of intimacy, LGBT subcultures, and the opioid epidemic, and the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Nan is an outsider by instinct and said to be nocturnal by nature and someone who lives on the edge of society where she creates her own rules. She revealed herself and name in the 1980s, visually recording her own stubborn life, and the often promiscuous lives of her circle of friends, which it included characters like addicts, hustlers, transvestites and prostitutes. Because of this, she redefined photography.

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman, real name Cynthia Morris Sherman, is an iconic self portrait photographer who famously became known due to her untitled film still, which was produced in 1977-80, where she put of guises and photographed herself in multiple different settings and resembled the mid 20th-century B movies.

She was always interested in identity as she stated that “I wish I could treat every day as halloween, and get dressed up and go out into the world as some eccentric character”

She probed the contractions of identity where she often played with visual and cultural codes of art, celebrity, gender and photography.

Shannon O’Donnell

Shannon is a women who completed A level studies and continued with a passion for photography and in fact has recently completed her BA (Hons), a degree in documentary photography at the university of South Wales.

During her 3-year degree she developed a number of projects based around gender identities and constructions.

Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun was born in 1894, Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France into a wealthy jewish family. Cahun was the whole package, she was an artist, photographer and writer. Till this day, she is known for her surreal self-portrait photography where she dressed up as different types of characters. Cahun explored and questioned gender, identity and subconscious of mind, particularly position of women. She did this through her art and in the way she spent her life.

Later, in her late teens/early twenties, Cahun had been looking for a gender neutral name. Soon she changed her name to Claude Cahun in 1918.

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Identity Politics

Identity politics is a political or social activity by or on behalf of a racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other group which feel a sense of unfairness due to their differences or conflicts between their particular identity

The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. Identity politics signifies a wide range of political activity and focuses on shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups. Recently, in the 20th century, there was been many political movements such as  feminism, Black Civil Rights in the U.S., gay and lesbian liberation, and the American Indian movements.

Identity politics aims to eliminate negative stereotypes of certain identities where the people affect try to regain the respect that should be shown towards their identities.

Culture Wars

Cultural wars is a conflict or struggle for dominance between groups within a society or between societies, arising from their differing beliefs, practices, etc. Culture wars have said to be caused by are created or perpetuated by political special interest groups, by reactionary social movements, by party dynamics, or by electoral politics as a whole. A culture war is about social policy wedge issues that are based on abstract arguments about values, morality, and lifestyle meant to provoke political cleavage in a multicultural society.

The language of “culture wars” was first popularised by James Davison Hunter in the early 1990s to describe the tension that had emerged from conflicting worldwide views. The term was able to make more people aware of culture. Culture wars are usually described attitudinal polarisation towards issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control, which tend to have either a strong moral or values basis, or capture changing norms.

Nikita Pirogov is a Russian photographer who’s photographs are from her journey through Europe. She has taken photographs of both people and places, comparing the beauty of both and looking beyond for a deeper symbolic connection between the two. I like her work as it captures two different types of beauty and portrays them conjoined together.

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is a photographer who portrays female stereotypes really well. In her work, she is both the photographer and the model, creating different personas of different women in society. In each photograph, she presents feelings such as mystery, suspense and vulnerability. These stills encapsulate femininity during this era playing on the feminist idea that gender arises exclusively within culture and deconstructs dominant gender ideologies. 

These are some of her photographs portraying different ‘types’ of women in different scenarios.:

Claud Cahan

Claude Cahun is a perfect example of someone who wanted to push the boundaries of gender roles in a stereotypical society. Claud Cahan, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer who is best known for her self-portraits. In her portraits, she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll. Cahan moved to Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. In 1944, she was imprisoned and sentenced to death for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis.

Her life was a representation of resistance, challenging the conventional ideas of beauty and femininity with her shaved head and male attire.  Her work pushed against the politics of gender and identity. She used domestic settings such as cupboards at home, presenting something interesting and new, exploring gender fluidity.

Femininity and masculinity are binary opposite, meaning they are a pair or related terms which mean the opposite to one another.

The term binary opposite originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linquistics, the scientific study of language. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another.

Using binary opposites can be very helpful in creating ideas for photography projects as it provides a framework – a set of boundaries to work within.

Other than femininity vs masculinity, other examples of binary opposites are good vs bad, man vs nature, beautiful vs ugly etc.

Femininity

Femininity can be described as the qualities or attributes of women or girls. The typical stereotypes of women tend to be kind, loving, helpful, nurturing, emotional and others related. Femininity can also be understood as a social construct and some behaviours that are considered to be more feminine are influenced by cultural and biological factors. The term ‘femininity’ has been adapted over many decades, during more traditional times, women were seen as fragile and loving and that they should stay at home and be maternal. However, this idea is stereotypical, women are now proving they can be and do much more.

Masculinity

Masculinity can be described as the qualities or attributes regarded as characteristics of men or boys. Masculinity is also seen as a social construct as it has an alternate meaning in different cultures and societies. Attributes which are normally viewed and masculine include being strong, powerful, scary, violent, assertive and others. When women began to work rather than stay at home and do housework and be maternal, some men felt unhappy and uncomfortable in their masculinity as their status as the money maker was now shared with the woman.

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Choosing my best images:

To choose my best images from the photoshoot, I went through and rated all of the photos using stars, 4/5 and 5/5 stars mean that they are my overall best images. I then colour coded them. Red means photos which are not the best, yellow are photos which I could use but they’re not amazing, and green are the best images I will use and edit.