Claude Cahun was a French photographer. She creates a confusion between masculinity and femininity in her work, to make her images thought provoking. Cahun explores the boundaries of gender and desire, purposefully creating conflicting images that would have been viewed as risky during the time they were produced. Cahun encompasses the question of identity in her work, posing questions of gender confusion as well as the roles of each gender.
A Series Of Self-Portraits
Image Analysis
Objectively, this black and white photograph shows a person looking into the distance, with the same person then looking back at themselves. The person has a shaved head and appears to have no clothes on their top half. Subjectively, I feel that the image poses the subject of gender confusion. As a viewer, I cannot distinguish whether the subject is a male or a female. The first subject has a haunted look, almost as if they aren't fully aware of the second subject, gazing at themselves with a dark stare. I think this image is interesting because of the dual presence in the photograph. This is something that I want to explore in my own work, to show the two personalities of someone who suffers from a mental illness.
I have chosen not to continue researching and studying Claude Cahun as I have found other photographers who I believe fit in better with my project and its title. I think that as my project develops , Claude Cahun's work will have little relevance and so I would rather draw inspiration from another photographers work to inform the development of my project.
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