Claude Cahun was a French writer, photographer, surrealist and performance artist who was born of the name Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob. Cahun employed a subversive avant-garde art practice as a form of resistance to the Nazis while also exploring the combined issues of gender, sexuality and power. She created antinationalist leaflets that mocked Nazi ideology and distributed them throughout Jersey, leaving them in strategic places. To present her views further, she created a series of photographs and photomontages that challenged traditional ideas of gender, sexuality and identity. In her self portraits she dresses as a man, a woman and a genderless figure; blurring the boundaries between gender and challenging the viewer‘s assumptions about identity. Cahun’s connection to Jersey stemmed from many childhood holidays where she stayed on the island.

Visual

This photograph is of Claude Cahun herself. She is posed sat down with her legs crossed to one side while staring directly at the camera. She is wearing a short skirt with leggings underneath that have hearts drawn on them. Her long sleeved top also has writing on it saying ‘I AM TRAINING DONT KISS ME’ with two black dots either side. She has bold and stylistic makeup on her face with her hair slicked into a split style. She is also holding dumbbells with the words ‘TOTOR’ and ‘POPOL’ on them.

Technical

I believe that this photograph uses artificial lighting in order to darken the background and make the subject stand out. The background is in soft focus as the photo seems to be taken with a wide aperture. The photo has been taken at eye level in order to connect the subject and the viewer. Taken at a three quarter body shot, the costuming of the model is able to be seen which is important to convey Cahun’s artist goal.

Contextual

In 1920-1930, women were expected to take a more compliant role with priorities around raising children and providing emotional support for their husbands. However, during the twenties, those demands came to seem less and less compatible with women learning to value their individuality above the needs of others.

Conceptual

Cahun used her work to showcase gender neutrality and often undermined the traditional concepts of static gender roles. I believe the message on her top presents this idea by implying that she prioritises independence and education over taking a passive role. The use of two dumbbells could symbolise her multiple and split personalities as she takes on alter egos within her art. The dumbbells are also in juxtaposition with the femininity presented, with contrasts being a common theme in her work.

For my photoshoot, I will take inspiration from some of Cindy Sherman’s work and explore gender stereotypes and societal norms/expectations towards each gender.

Who? – My parents.

What? – Hands (stereotypically, male hands bruised dirty from work and female clean), stereotypic environments + outfits + expectations (e.g. boy’s don’t cry, women must cook and clean) – in black and white to give older impression and highlight how stereotypes supress and influence identity.

Where? – Stereotypic environments (male at work, female in kitchen).

Why? – Explore how stereotypes as well as social expectations affect identity, self-perception and emotions (focus on social/gender identity).

Initial Photo Ideas:

1 – Juxtapose photo of my dad’s hands with photo of my mum’s hands, male hands will be significantly more worn because in their time period in Portugal stereotypes such as males being the ‘breadwinners’ and workers whereas women cooked and cleaned were deeply rooted into society. Contrast side by side and present in black and white to create a more serious tone as well as highlighting differences in each hand much more clearly, showing how the social expectations and stereotypes of their time has influenced them physically and therefore shaped their identity/self-perception even now.

2 – Juxtapose stereotypic outfits/environments of males and females, e.g. have my dad in a work environment dressed in construction gear/a suit and contrast with my mum dressed in an apron/cleaning gear in a kitchen. Explore how gender stereotypes have influenced their identity, both their social identity and gender identity due to societal expectations – dull/bleak atmosphere, environmental portraits with a neutral face and presented in black and white. Could also contrast elements of each stereotypic environment, e.g. compare construction gear vs cleaning materials and suit texture vs cleaning gear texture.

3 – Juxtapose social expectations from each gender with each other, e.g. contrast males being frowned upon for crying and expected to be ‘manly’ with females being seen as more vulnerable, emotional and only good for cleaning etc. Could photograph dad in a restricted/uncomfortable environment appearing to be holding back tears to present how these expectations restrict and shape identity.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) was an American photographer known for his surreal and haunting images that explored themes of identity, family, and the uncanny. Using masks, blurred motion, and creepy rural settings, he created dreamlike photographs that combined Southern Gothic aesthetics with Zen philosophy. Meatyard often used his own family and friends as subjects, blending personal intimacy with conceptual depth. His work, though underappreciated during his lifetime, is now celebrated for its experimental spirit and its ability to transform ordinary moments into profound art.

Meatyard inspires me because his art shows how creativity can emerge from the deeply personal and the familiar. He demonstrated that profound expression doesn’t require elaborate resources—only imagination and a willingness to see the world differently. His use of masks and surreal compositions invites exploration of themes like identity and transformation, while his experimental approach encourages breaking free of conventional rules.

How does he Portray Identity In his pictures?

Ralph Eugene Meatyard explored identity in his photography by blurring the lines between who we are and how we appear. He used masks to hide his subjects’ faces, stripping away individuality and turning them into symbols or characters. This made his photos feel universal, like they were about everyone and no one at the same time.

He also played with motion blur, shadows, and eerie settings, making his subjects seem ghostly or out of place, as if identity itself was fleeting or hard to pin down. By shooting in old houses or rural landscapes, he tied identity to memory and the passing of time. His work invites you to think about how much of identity is what we show and how much is hidden or shaped by the world around us.

Mood board

Plan/Themes

The first image reflects my love for football, especially Liverpool. I could use this idea for my photoshoots since a lot of my friends play football. I could snap shots of them in play, like dribbling, passing, or celebrating goals, or just catch them in their kits, showing moments of their teamwork or focus.

Another one I could possible do is a family gathering for christmas and the holidays, as this could represent almost like an environmental portraiture of different family members next to christmas decorations and lights.

There are many options I could choose from that are in relation to my identity but I think I will most likely refer my photoshoots to artists references, such as:

Christoffer Relander

Relander’s photography is all about showing how complex and layered identity can be. He doesn’t just capture portraits of people; he blends them with landscapes, nature, and other elements to suggest that our identity is not just about who we are, but also where we’re from and what surrounds us.

By merging human faces with trees, mountains, or skies, Relander suggests that our identity is connected to the natural world. It’s not just about us as individuals, but how we fit into a bigger picture, our relationship with nature, the environment, and the universe.

Relander’s approach, using double exposure, lets him create a deeper story about identity in each photo. It’s not just about showing someone’s face, it’s about showing the multiple sides of who they are. Relander’s process is a mix of skill and creativity. He doesn’t just take pictures; he carefully crafts his shots to tell a deeper story about who we are.

IDENTITY

Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterize a person or a group. Identity emerges during childhood as children start to comprehend their self-concept, and it remains a consistent aspect throughout different stages of life.

FEMEININITY

Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors.

MASCULINITY

Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviours, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed. and there is also evidence that some behaviours considered masculine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent masculinity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is distinct from the definition of the biological male sex. as anyone can exhibit masculine traits. Standards of masculinity vary across different cultures and historical periods. In Western cultures, its meaning is traditionally drawn from being contrasted with femininity.

how can identity be found…

In a place:

An important mechanism that supports place identity is the attachment to a specific place. Individuals often develop an emotional bond to their life space, essentially their home and the neighbourhood, but often also urban places and spaces on a larger scale.

in a belonging:

Who and where we belong influences our sense of identity. Other people may believe they know our identity, but in reality, they may not know us at all. Where we belong is influenced more by family than friends. The identity of one changes with different relationships. The sense of belonging is one of our basic human needs. It helps us orient each other in an ever-changing environment.

Your environment:

When we are in familiar surroundings, we tend to feel more secure and strengthen our sense of identity. We feel more in control of our lives and boost our self-confidence. On the other hand, when we lack an established place, a home, we may feel lost and disconnected.

upbringing:

Many of our emotional ties, and even our relationships with money, people and God are influenced by our childhood experiences. Role models have a massive effect on a child’s self-identity. Many of our emotional ties, and even our relationships with money, people and God are influenced by our childhood experiences.

gender identity:

Gender enters into all our social relations. When people interact, their view of themselves, including their identity and their rights and possibilities, comes up against the way they are perceived by other people, and the way that others behave towards them.

cultural identity:

Culture is a defining feature of a person’s identity, contributing to how they see themselves and the groups with which they identify. A person’s understanding of their own and other’s identities develops from birth and is shaped by the values and attitudes prevalent at home and in the surrounding community.

social identity:

 Our family, upbringing, environment, genetic makeup (psychological and physical), and social interactions all play a role in identity formation.

geographical identity:

We can speak to how our geographic locations shape the languages we speak, the practices we engage in, our relationships to the people around us, and how we imagine the future

 political identity

 This can include identification with a political party, but also positions on specific political issues, nationalism, inter-ethnic relations or more abstract ideological themes. Political identities develop in individuals and evolve over time

Multi Exposure

Double or multiple exposures in photography are an illusion created by layering images over the top of each other. This can be achieved by creating layers and then using opacity control. Artists use these techniques to explore surrealist ideas and evoke dream-like imagery or composition that explores the idea of time.

My picture

While researching Idris Khan, I was inspired by his approach to multi exposure that focuses on architecture. In his work, he layers differently positioned photographs of a building over each other in an editing software while altering their opacity so all layers are visible. After this is complete, he makes his photographs black and white with a high contrast to highlight his artistic goal of the passage of time. Due to my artistic goal being similar, I decided to create my composition based off his process and stylistic results. I visited a church during a well lit afternoon and took many photographs of the building and the environment around it; moving around and across the church for each shot. With my collection of images coming out with different angles and framing, they could easily be placed over each other in ways that would allow for each layer to be visible. After importing them all into photoshop, I took some time to toggle the opacity of each individual image until I ended up with a result that I found to be effective and that looked similar to Khan’s work. For my final edits, I made the finished composition black and white while slightly toggling the contrast. Something I noticed in my final photograph was the tone being built on the lower half of the picture. This was due to the shared and similar visuals at the bottom of my collection of photos, which were layered over each other and therefore building darkness. This is actually seen to be the case with Khan’s photographs too, which is useful in order to make my own composition look like something from his work.

Photo Montage

Photo montage work includes various types of image editing in which multiple photographs are cut up and combined to form one new image. This can involve cutting up printed images or working to manipulate photographs in photoshop. A montage is an assembly of images that relate to each other in some way to create a single work or part of a work of art.

My Picture

Using one of my discarded photos from my butterfly lighting photoshoot, I used photoshop to manipulate the face in my photograph. I was inspired by Kensuoke Koike to focus on this idea due to its simple but effective visuals. Koike works with close up photographs of faces where he selects various shapes from the image and moves or turns them across the picture. This creates the idea of disorientation and corruption in self image. Due to Koike’s motif of circles and geometric shapes within his work, I decided that on my close up photograph I would create a spiral in the middle of her face. With Koike previously creating similar works, I selected circles in the centre of the frame with them getting smaller and smaller as they reach the middle. With each shape I selected, I spun them all slightly clockwise; turning them gradually more and more as the circles get closer to the centre of the image. Finally, I edited my picture into greyscale while also sharping the shadows of the whole image in order to bring attention to the formal elements of my composition. The majority of Koike’s work also share this similar colour palette so I thought this would be another way to make a successful replica of one of his pieces.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition in photography is placing two images together to show contrast or similarities. It is a powerful technique that can be utilized to create visually compelling images. By purposefully placing contrasting elements within a frame, photographers can engage viewers with thought provoking compositions. These elements can vary from colours, textures, shapes, concepts and emotions.

My Picture

A photographer who peaked my interest in juxtaposition photography is Andrea Chapman. Chapman, my personal favourite photographer, is a sensitive artist who is drawn to fragile things as well as the relationship between humans and nature. This connection of nature and the human body and life is something I am interested in and keen to involve within my own work. Diptych’s, which are commonly used in Chapman’s work, are photography pieces made up of two panels that are intended to be displayed side by side. This technique is something I have used in my work due to its obvious links to juxtaposition. In Chapman’s work, I have noticed that she tends to pair together images where the tones are similar, the framing is similar and the composition of objects are similar. While I specifically chose to follow her idea thread of hands comparing to plants, these are all aspects I considered in my final picture. For my composition, I took two different photographs. I photographed my friends hand splayed out in an expressive pose against a black background. After this, I found a plant that I believed to have a similar structure of my first picture. I angled it in the same way as hand picture with the stalk going out the frame, mirroring the arms, and then took the picture on a black background as well. After I aligned the pictures next to each other with the white border, I worked on the pictures individually with some tonal adjustments. I made various saturation and colour tweaks to the photographs in order to further establish the connection between the two images with rules that Chapman follows.

Identity is anything that makes you unique, what represents you and what is personal to you, this could be something going on within your life such as being in hospital all the way to something as simple as your gender.

Masculinity

The idea of masculinities refers to the position of men in the gender order. Whitehead and Barrett explain that: Masculinities are those behaviours, languages and practices, existing in specific cultural and organisational locations, which are commonly associated with men, thus culturally defined as not feminine

Femininity

Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviours considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors

Where you live and the environment around you shape who you are.

• Culture and Community: Your traditions, language, and sense of belonging often come from where you grow up.
• Opportunities: Wealthy or poor areas can influence how you see yourself and your future.
• City or Nature: Living in a busy city or close to nature can shape your lifestyle and values.
• Big Changes: Moving, migration, or tough events like disasters can shift your identity.
• Safety and Freedom: Safe places let you be yourself, while unsafe ones might make you cautious.
• Online Life: The internet also shapes how you see yourself and connect with others.

In short, your environment helps define who you are and how you see the world.

Cindy Sherman is an American artist and photographer known for creating powerful portraits where she transforms herself into different characters. Her work explores themes of identity, gender, and how society shapes the roles people play.

Her most famous series, Untitled Film Stills, features her posing as women from old Hollywood-style movies, highlighting familiar but stereotypical female roles. Later, her work became darker and more surreal, using props, mannequins, and strange costumes to explore themes like beauty, aging, and human fragility.

Sherman is considered one of the most important artists of her time, with her work displayed in major museums worldwide. Her art challenges us to think about who we are and how much of our identity is shaped by outside forces.

Cindy Sherman’s art challenges the way we think about femininity and masculinity by showing that gender roles are like costumes we put on, not fixed parts of who we are.

Femininity

• Questioning Stereotypes: In her famous Untitled Film Stills, she dresses as characters like housewives, movie stars, and “damsels in distress” — roles often seen in old films. By doing this, she highlights how society expects women to fit into certain “types.”
• Challenging Beauty Standards: Later, her work features creepy, aging, or distorted figures, forcing us to question society’s obsession with youth, beauty, and perfection in women.
• Exposing Society’s Gaze: Her work makes us think about how women are often seen as objects to be looked at, especially in media. By controlling how she’s seen, Sherman flips this power dynamic.

Masculinity

• Power and Control: While she focuses more on femininity, Sherman also critiques masculinity. Some of her later works feature clownish, exaggerated “masculine” figures that highlight how fragile and performative power can be.
• Gender as Performance: By using wigs, makeup, and costumes to switch between “male” and “female” roles, she shows that masculinity, like femininity, is just another role people play.

This is a piece that is part of her collection

“This is how I look I guess”

Sherman’s work reveals that gender roles aren’t natural they’re performances shaped by media and culture, this shows especially within this piece. Her art encourages us to think about how much of our identity is real and how much is something we’ve been taught to “act out.”

In this piece she shows very few distinctive feminine aspects and masculine aspects, a very obvious feminine aspect which you can see is her big lips with lipstick on, this is linked primarily to females.

The pieces within the collection all have a creepy look to them, it is people with aged and wrinkly skin with photos of overly feminine lips and different eyes placed over the original photo.

This whole collection is about Cindy Sherman reclaiming her self image, social media encourages people to show flawless and perfect versions of themselves, Sherman takes control in her own way. Her weird, distorted self-portraits fight back against beauty standards, showing that self-expression doesn’t have to be done in a certain way and to society’s standards.

WHAT IS IDENTITY ?

Identity refers to our sense of who we are as individuals and as members of social groups. It also refers to our sense of how others may perceive and label us. We develop our identities and the identities of others through our interaction with people close to us, like our family and friends.

Our ideas about our identity are also influenced by social groups to which we belong. This concept is called social identity.

Social identity refers to your idea of yourself based on your memberships in certain groups. While there are many social groups, some of the main ones include ability, age, economy class, gender, nationality, language, race, sexual orientation,…

Information by https://www.facinghistory.org/

TYPES OF IDENTITY

GENDER IDENTITY

For many people gender identity corresponds to the gender you were given at birth, for others it means the gender you identity with even if its not the same as the one given to you at birth.

CULTURAL IDENTITY

Cultural identity refers to the shared beliefs, norms, values, and practices that define a group of individuals, often linked by ethnicity, nationality or religion. This identity shapes individuals perceptions of themselves and their relationship to the world influencing their behaviours, attitudes, and interactions with others.

SOCIAL IDENTITY

Social identity is the portion of an individual’s self- concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.

GEOGRAPHICAL IDENTITY

An individual or group’s sense of attachment to the country , region, city, or village in which they live

POLITICAL IDENTITY

Political identity is a form of social identity marking membership of certain groups that share a common struggle for a certain form of power.

LOSS OF IDENTIY

Identity loss refers to the gradual erosion or disappearance of distinct cultural traits, practices, and beliefs, often resulting from external influences or pressures such as globalization. migration, or technological change.

WHAT IS FEMININITY?

Stereotypical Femininity refers to a set of cultural and social norms associated with characteristics typically attributed to women, such as nurturing, empathy, and gracefulness. It often includes qualities life emotional intelligence. Long hair, long eyelashes, painted nails, the colour pink and red,…

WHAT IS MACULINITY?

Stereotypical Masculinity refers to a set of cultural and social norms associated with characteristics typically attributed to men, such as physical strength, assertiveness and independence. It often encompasses traits life competitiveness, emotional stoicism and focus on career success. Short hair, strong looking, facial hair,…

STEREOTYPES

Stereotypes are characteristics that society instinctively attributes to groups of people to classify them according to age, weight, skin colour, gender, etc. Sexual stereotyping involves associating girls and boys with opposite sets of characteristics.

IDENTITY PHOTOGRAPHY ( not my pictures)

Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, or expressions that characterize a person. Identity means different things ot different people and everyone identifies themselves with something else – could be a job, a role, a parent, a sportsperson – e.g skateboarder, baseball player.

Femininity is described as the qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of girls. The stereotypical qualities for women are pretty much the polar opposite – kind, emotional, compassionate, nurturing, gentle.