Dimensions: 238 x 180 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Claude Cahun | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: This is an untitled black and white photograph by Claude Cahun, part of the Tate collection. There’s a doll-like figure under a glass dome, which gives it an eerie, theatrical feel. What’s your take on this photograph? Curator: Cahun’s work often challenges fixed notions of gender and identity. Consider how the figure is presented. Encased, displayed. Does this suggest a critique of societal expectations, a fight against being categorized or contained? What does the lack of a title tell us? Editor: It almost feels like a defiant act of refusal. Curator: Exactly. Cahun uses the surreal to explore the personal and political. The photograph becomes a stage for their own self-discovery and resistance. Hopefully, this encourages us to question what we think we know about identity. Editor: I never thought about it that way. Now I see so much more.
Comments
Join the conversation
Join millions of artists and users on Artera today and experience the ultimate creative platform.
This is one of a group of photographs Cahun produced in 1936 from assemblages involving a bell jar and a wooden artist’s mannequin. Another version of this work, a photograph of the same assemblage slightly altered, is in the collection of the Jersey Heritage Trust archive (reproduced Downie, pp.78 and 180). In both images the mannequin is feminised by a length of blonde hair woven around its body. It stands in a dynamic position as though arrested in movement – arms held out, supporting the lock of hair that extends down to the doll’s pedestal and curves around its ankle. What appears to be a piece of wire describing a flower-shape extends from the lock of hair to the mannequin’s groin. A strip of white tape around the mannequin’s head (possibly fixing the hair in place) appears to blindfold it, suggesting that the extended arms are blindly feeling their way. On the wooden surface in front of the bell jar a length of white fabric lies in a haphazard arrangement with another length of blonde hair that points upwards towards the mannequin. At the extreme right of the image a china doll’s head is supported on the bun of hair at the back of the head so that its face looks up. In the Jersey Heritage Trust version the length of ribbon and the doll’s head are inside the bell jar which is framed at the top of the image, above the broad length of wood (part of a table or mantelshelf) on which the bell jar stands, showing the shadow cast by the mannequin and its hairpiece on the wall behind. The same mannequin poses with symbols of masculine imperialist power in Untitled, 1936 (P79318), with an upraised sword and a set of scales in an additional image (reproduced Claude Cahun: Photographe, p.104, cat.155) and with an outsized key, a hammer and a doll-sized book in several further photographs (reproduced Downie, pp.180-1) in the same group.
CollectMore like this
