inspiration: claude cahun

happy birthday, claude cahun. cahun was born on this day in 1894.

In many ways, Cahun's life was marked by a sense of role reversal, and her public identity became a commentary upon not only her own, but the public's notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. Her adoption of a sexually ambiguous name, and her androgynous self-portraits display a revolutionary way of thinking and creating, experimenting with her audience's understanding of photography as a documentation of reality. Her poetry challenged gender roles and attacked the increasingly modern world's social and economic boundaries. Also Cahun's participation in the Parisian Surrealist movement diversified the group's artwork and ushered in new representations. Where most Surrealist artists were men, and their primary images were of women as isolated symbols of eroticism, Cahun epitomized the chameleonic and multiple possibilities of the female identity. Her photographs, writings, and general life as an artistic and political revolutionary continue to influence countless artists, namely Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.

i think it's unsurprising that i have a very special place in my heart for claude cahun and their art. the 1920s are definitely one of my favourite eras in terms of film, art, fashion, architecture... pretty much all around aesthetically i find it most dear to me. one of my favourite artists working in that era was claude cahun. the playing with identity, the use of photography, art, and clothing to express those different identities... it always stuck with me.

que me veux-tu? (autoportrait double); claude cahun, 1929.

auto-portrait; claude cahun, 1925

i.o.u. (self-pride); claude cahun, 1929-30

"sous se masque, un autre masque. je n'en finirai pas de soulever tous ses visages."

"under this mask, another. i will never succeed in unearthing all of these faces."

LINKS:
claude cahun on wikipedia
thoughts about bahaus + gender
Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman edited by Shelley Rice
(someone, please buy me this book. three of my favourite people, artists, icons combined in one book!)

LINKS IN FRENCH:
De l'Éros des femmes surréalistes et de Claude Cahun en particulier par Georgiana M. M. Colville
Une héroïne impossible: Claude Cahun par Agnès Lhermitte

art: craftivism at fashion week

the blogging world is abuzz with fashion week news, talking about which collections are their favourite, what is the hot new colour palette, and who was in the front row. that's fun and all, but how about some food for thought: craftivist Sarah Corbett of the London Craftivist Collective snuck into the London Fashion Week premises to leave this lovely message:

Lowest paid models at London Fashion Week paid £125 an hour. Majority of garment workers in Vietnam paid £25 a month. - love from the Craftivist Collective

this news courtesy of mr x stitch, via the lovely mccall. simple, beautiful, powerful stuff. this amazing team are forcing people to pay attention to the massive discrepancies and rampant abuse of worker's rights, all while using fashion's very own tools, a needle and thread. talk about using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house...

i really like this kind of activism, which has been coined as "craftivism." it's in your face without being flashy. simple and to the point, presenting the viewer with a fact that is confrontational and hard to forget. for some more context, let's look at the london craftivist collective's manifesto:

To expose the scandal of global poverty, and human rights injustices though the power of craft and public art. This will be done through provocative, non-violent creative actions.

after a bit of digging around, i found that this is far from the first fashion related craftivist activity that has happened! here are some more lovely projects.

and of course, my favourite part: "love fashion, hate sweatshops." click here to read more about this initiative.

courtesy of the sugar paper gang

happy link perusing!

EDITED TO ADD:

the first photo has been making the rounds on tumblr, and i wanted to add what i thought were some interesting reflections and statements.

from antibromide:

Those two statements aren’t correlated. Garments worn in fashion week are not made in Vietnam for pennies an hour. The garments made in Vietnam are the things sold at stores like Forever 21 to people who want to look like they buy designer goods but don’t want to pay designer prices (or pay the high prices of goods manufacured in the United States). Fashion week isn’t the problem, fast fashion stores that will do anything to have goods made faster and cheaper and the people who shop those stores are the problem.

and some wise words from materialworld:

Co-relation point = well, yes but no.

The message is simplistic for impact, but it’s also an oversimplification that cheap brands exploit workers while expensive designer labels don’t. In Australia this has been disproven by rights monitoring agencies including Fair Wear, as labels may outsource for some items in a range only, produce the garments in-house from under-priced outsourced fabrics, or produce multiple ranges for different economic niches with different production ethics in each.

Eco-Chic by Matilda Lee gives a handy, more UK focussed introduction to the unseen supply/demand impacts of trend based fashion, if anyone is interested.

I don’t interpret this as directed at any particular Fashion Week label anyway. More a general, clever, protest of the way global fashion cultures - which Fashion Week sets trends for - privilege women in wealthier nations as objects of desire or consumers over those women in the majority world supply chain as labourers.

i think both people raise very important and interesting points. i completely agree with materialworld's last point: the fact that this kind of craftivism is at least in some manner confronting the unfair and exploitative world of who imagines, who creates, and who consumes fashion. i think this could start a very important conversation about the relationship that fashion weeks around the world have to the "fast fashion" industry that we are so quick to criticize, while simultaneously upholding these unproven statements that the "higher" fashion industries (prêt à porter, haute couture, runways shows, etc) do not play a part in exploitation.

in my opinion, stating something like "fashion week isn't the problem, fast fashion is" as antibromide does is just too reductive for me to swallow.

what do you think?

LINKS:
Craftivist Collective
Love Fashion, Hate Sweatshops
Craftivist Collective's flickr stream
Radical Cross Stitch
DIY

inspiration: femme fatales by niagara

Run by Niagara

darksilenceinsuburbia posted this image quite some time ago, but it's only now that i got around to digging up a bit more information about the artist. a little bit of Litchenstein, a dash of Warhol, swirl it up with a love of ladies with guns in film history and there you have it: the art of Niagara.

her femme fatales evoke some of the most powerful women from the golden age of cinema, joan crawford, bette davis, clara bow... not to mention the "pretty faces" like veronica lake and jane russell. i'm personally drawn to the bold and tough attitude the women have, and totally have my own empowering feminist interpretation of them. here are a few of my favourites:

Bang Bang


Double Shot


I'm Pretty When I'm Angry


Don't Fuck with Me

Fuck Off Outta Here

Double Back

not to mention, the artist herself has quite an impressive and interesting story. she fronted the band Destroy All Monsters (who, as a fan of MC5, i am quite surprised i had never heard of before). here's a picture of her having quite a time in the late 70s:

plus, thurston moore of sonic youth helped to put together a compilation of Destroy All Monsters' music in 1994, since they had never formally recorded. here she is hanging with two of my favourite people, thurston moore and kim gordon.




she seems all around quite badass to me.

inspiration: body, identity, disguise and performance

unity ball, montreal, 1996 by pierre dalpé

gender, drag and identity as performance/costume have been weighing heavily on my mind lately. i mentioned in a few earlier posts how the longer my hair gets the more uncomfortable i am with how my gender performance is read. sometimes i really love the subversion of high-femme dress juxtaposed with no makeup, hair fussing, or shaving, but sometimes i think i'd like to be a bit more "in your face" with genderfucking. shave my head. wear more menswear. it might have something to do with my loves, in real life, in film, photography, and of course in fashion.

just this past week i watched an old favourite, hedwig and the angry inch, with a friend, and nearly rounded off my consumption of everything almodovar when i finally got around to seeing la mala educacion. i think i prefer almodovar's films focused on women, but i really enjoyed the film overall.

gael garcia bernal in la mala educacion (almodovar, 2004)

on top of those films, i was recently introduced to montreal-based photographer Pierre Dalpé's work. this past year he has been working in mexico, taking portraits of actors, friends, children, and parades. but for our purposes, let us focus in on his prior work: projects like Personae, Backstage, and Clothes-Minded.

My work deals with the interconnected relationships between the body, identity, disguise, and performance.

his beautiful black and white series really strike me with their beauty and the personalities of his subjects contained within the frame. aside from the fact that they raise questions about gender, performativity, drag, and trans identities, they are simply amazingly beautiful.

here are a few more images from his website, as well as some quotes about gender.

from clothes-minded:

peter, 1990

alex, 1990

there is a real respect and appreciation for his subjects that i think really comes across strongly in these pieces. one wonders, does dalpé also do drag himself? who are peter, alex, manny, julie and colleen? are these his friends, lovers, brothers in arms? are these portraits necessarily deep deconstructions of what "gender" is, or are they just a simple homage to the beauty of these people and how they choose to present themselves? so many potential questions, all triggered by beautiful photographs.

from personae:

saul, sarah and joanne, 1998

jeffrey and ultra, 1998

the forrest twins, 2008

his series personae, on the other hand, clearly makes references to diane arbus and plays more with performance and costuming than his other portraits. the theatrical staged aspect of these portraits really make you wonder about how much our every day gender presentation is... well, staged. interesting food for thought.

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original. - Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" in Inside/Out (1991) edited by Diana Fuss

Masculinity and femininity are like two dialects of the same language. Though we all understand both, most of us "speak" only one. - Esther Newton

Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a “doing” rather than a “being.” - Judith Butler

to end things off, recently i have been poring over the pages of gender relations in global perspective, edited by nancy cook. one of my favourite readings so far has been leslie feinberg's "the giveaway," which focuses on how trans people have been treated by various native communities across north america, and the impact of colonization on those people (who are referred to as Two-Spirited). it is a really powerful text, i highly recommend reading it.

i think it is incredibly important for us to understand who benefits from imposing a rigid gender binary on bodies of all various presentations, especially in lieu of the news of recent medical interventions on young girls with "clitoris deemed too big" by doctors. once again we have to ask ourselves questions about why we are so obsessed with the idea that there are only two sexes, and in order to be socially accepted, we must fit into the very narrow definition of what is an acceptable woman or man.

but! that is another rant for another day, only slightly related to these wonderful images, films, and people. in the meantime, here are some of my favourite parts from leslie feinberg's piece, the giveaway. seeing as today is national aboriginal day, it's quite appropriate to talk about how much colonization sucks and how native people kick ass. reading the whole text really makes a powerful point about resistance and resilience.

The language used by the colonizers [steeped in hatred] to describe the acceptance of sex/gender diversity, and of same-sex love most accurately described the viewer, not the viewed. And these sensational reports about Two-Spirit people were used to further "justify" genocide, the theft of Native land and resources, and destruction of their cultures and religions.

What stunned me (about discovering the Two-Spirit tradition) was that such ancient and diverse cultues allowed people to choose more sex/gender paths, and this diversity of human expression was honored as sacred. I had to chart the complex geography of sex and gender with a compass needle that only pointed to north or south.

.... What was responsible for the imposition of the present-day rigid sex/gender system in North America? It is not correct to simply blame patriarchy, Chrystos stressed to me. "The real word is 'colonization' and what it has done to the world. Patriarchy is a tool of colonization and exploitation of people and their lands."

and of course, i wouldn't let you run away without more potential brain candy!

recommended readings:
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler
Gender Through the Prism of Difference, edited by Maxine Baca Zinn, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Michael A. Messner
Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power and the Body (Thinking Gender) by Jana Sawacki
Gender Relations in Global Perspective, edited by Nancy Cook

zines:
Genderbent #2, by Cherry Poppins (available for download at the link, thanks to the Queer Zine Archive Project)
Gender Trouble available in zine form (downloadable pdf)

gender and sexuality resource list

films/documentaries:
Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990)
...And the rest is drag (King Crip Productions, 2009)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)

as always, i highly encourage people to support your local independent book dealers! and check with your library; if the books you are looking for aren't available, ask them to order them for you.

clothes with lives of their own

Las tres hermanas


Quinceañera.


Foto de familia.


Novia cortando el pastel.


Matrimonio.


Mujer posando.

i stumbled upon these photos on flickr the other day and am really quite smitten with them. i thought i'd share them with you here. aside from their obvious aesthetic appeal, i think they really say something about clothing's connection to its wearer... that clothes themselves can be relatively meaningless when stripped of their context and the person who has chosen to adorn themselves with those clothes.

in fact, it quite reminds me of miranda july's now defunct project "learning to love you more," specifically of assignment #55 - photograph a significant outfit. but that's an entire post unto itself!

what do these make you think of? do you find them creepy, interesting, inspiring?

on self-portraits and shaming

one of the things i set out to do with this blog when i started it was to examine self-portraits and their prevalance in fashion blogs and feminist art that is out there on the internet right now, as well as share some of my favourite people on the internet with you. and i haven't done that yet! so today, you get two for the price of one.

one of my favourite photographers, whose work is almost entirely composed of self-portraits, is katie west. she recently posted some really interesting thoughts on her blog which i really think are worth reading and thinking about, but before i share that with you i wanted to show you some of my favourite of her photographs.

marooned


cat lady


laundry


fun by myself

i've been following katie's work on the internet since her days on livejournal, maybe all the way back in 2005? yes, i liked her pictures, but i've always liked the way she writes, the way she articulates her ideas, and the way she still seems mysterious even though she's shown you naked pictures of her body in dozens of different positions. the way she writes about love, about sex, about loss all let you know there is a very sharp critical mind inside that pretty head, even if it is a very pretty head and we are trained to think that pretty heads are more often than not empty ones. and the post she wrote that i want to share with you has reminded me of that.

on top of being a great writer, being incredibly sexy and talented, she also has an awesome sense of humour.

you see, the thing is, if you're a young woman who puts naked pictures of herself up on the internet (regardless of their original intention) you will get detractors, critics, haters and my least favourite, shamers. this does not matter if you are conventionally attractive or not, if you fit into categories of acceptable or unacceptable. women's bodies will be criticized (yes, certainly, some more than others, and in more oppressive ways) and that is the way it (it being.. patriarchy? capitalism? both?) works. katie west decided to take this in stride, and titled her first book "low self-esteem" in response to the common idea that if a woman wants to take naked pictures of herself and put them up on the internet, she must have "issues" and have low self-esteem. how many times have women been shamed about their sexuality, about their bodies, and about their desires by being told that they are the ones who have a problem, not the other way around? i can't even count, myself.

brilliant, no?

but enough about what i have to say. the reason i'm telling you about katie is that she's said some really interesting things about how self-portraits and especially how erotic self-portraits done by women are judged, and the responses to her have been really inspiring. from her post entitled "sometimes:"

...sometimes I get discouraged that these things are making me think I have to answer to someone for what I do. I found something a woman wrote about me today that said

the real katie west bent over is not in a position of power. it is one of submission. it invites the internet to fuck her without seeing her face. (this position is fine for lovers who respect each other, but for strangers it suggests worse things. how easy is it to jam her face into the wall rather than a soft pillow? to put a hand over her mouth?)

katie west, you are not a positive role model for women, so please stop pretending to be. put an XXX on your page, sell-out the good old fashioned american way. but don’t for a second make me think that your emaciated body and self indulgent photography is supposed to EMPOWER me. i can pick up any men’s magazine that comes in a black bag and get that same empowerment. just because you take the photograph yourself doesn’t mean you are in control, it means you are perpetuating the lack for free. you are building the cage around you.

It said some other stuff too. I believe the woman who wrote this, deleted it, as when I tried to click back to the source, the page couldn’t be found.

...I believe in what I do. And it is usually a constant struggle to maintain this faith, as often I’m faced with the types of accusations the woman brings up in her post. And I question my motives, and how I go about everything I do, make myself shake with nervousness and worry, but always come to the same realization: I believe in what I do. I believe that what I do is take honest pictures and write honest writings. If someone finds them pornographic, it can’t be helped. No one pressures me to take my clothes off, no one is paying me to do it, no one is telling me they’ll like me better if I do. I do it, because being sexual, being erotic, it’s just part of me. The photo I believe she’s referring to is one taken in a hotel room in Minneapolis, where I captured myself missing a lover, strange that she should mention lovers then, no? And she’s right I do create an act of submission by posting my pictures on the internet; I submit to people who look at them and say, “here, this is it.” And I know people, mostly women, appreciate that because I get emails telling me so. The vast majority of all the emails I get from strangers on the internet are from appreciative women, so how can I not believe in what I do?

you can read the entire post here, and i encourage you to. but this is what i love about the post; west is really speaking to the power of self-portraits as a way of exploring your own identity and that is something i feel a lot of people don't really get. and she addresses that in a sense as well; people are free to take away whatever they want from her photography, and that is part of the power in it. i can impose my own stories into her photographs, just as anyone else is free to. i can fantasize. how much power does the creator of that image have? is it more or less than the power that the viewer has? that is part of the interesting nature of self-portraits and something i really want to learn more about. it started the first time i saw a cindy sherman untitled film still, and my interest has not waned since.

in my experience with self-portraits, i never want people i know to see them. i am embarrassed at the idea of someone thinking any number of reasons as to why i put the self-timer on and take photos of myself. you are letting your guard down by showing them to strangers, to people you know, by having them easily accessible to anyone. personally, i take self-portraits for dozens of reasons, some admittedly more interesting than others: boredom, using the digital camera as a full-length mirror, to see how others might see me, to try to capture a moment, a place, somewhere i have never been and will never be again. this can be physically or emotionally or what may have you. most of these, i never share with anyone.

one last thing about what katie west has to say:

And yeah, my photography is self-indulgent; I take it for myself. I don’t take it to empower anyone else, I take it to empower me. I do it because it makes me happy.

amen, sister. at the end of the day, that's what i love about her photography and about her writing, that's it's so clearly for herself and not for me. that i am lucky that she has chosen to share it with me, and that she could take it away if she wanted to. that's powerful enough in itself, even without her badass posturing, eye for amazing natural light and her straight-up talent. if anonymous people on the internet want to keep writing things about her in an attempt to silence, she will show them otherwise, and i am glad it only reinforces my admiration for her. thank goodness for people like katie west.

edited to add: after having spent a good two hours writing this, i notice that laurie penny has already written a much more articular and well-written piece. her blog is fucking amazing and i am glad to have found it and just read that.