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INVERTED IMAGES |
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An investigation of the lesbian identity through visual and cultural representation |
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– self-possessed, meeting the camera’s gaze head-on. The image of an androgynous Cahun rejects the traditional images of femininity expected to preen before the mirror and entice the viewer directly with a sexy look.(ibid, p. 35) The work of both these women, who were openly lesbian, simultaneously acknowledges and rejects the work of Havelock Ellis. Although incorporating the masculine/feminine elements of his theory, Cahun demonstrated that her identity was much more than his narrow interpretation by introducing androgyny and narcissism into the equation while Abbott teased her audience with metaphors of mystery and play-acting. I have returned many times to the idea that the lesbian identity is a label pinned on certain women and used to both set them apart from and diminish them in the eyes of society. Some women unquestioningly accepted the idea that they were different to other women because of their sexual preferences, and for them ‘the unquestioned role choices open to lesbians were two – butch or femme’. (Bannon annbannon.com, [no date] ). Others, while accepting the label, refused to be drawn into role-playing and began to look for ways of representing this ‘lesbian identity’ in positive ways, creating ‘alternative’ viewpoints. Rosy Martin offers a way to both acknowledge the ‘difference’ while rejecting the label through the concept of ‘phototherapy’, a project she worked on with Jo Spence in the late 1980s. Although seemingly unaware of the negative connotations of therapy in relation to the lesbian identity, Martin does touch on the fact that it is a ‘psychic and social construction … within the drama of the everyday‘ and, in her online CV, goes on to say that her work ‘makes explicit the multiplicity of identities that an individual inhabits, using the “self” as a text to be deconstructed, reviewed, challenged and reconsidered’ (p.01). She approaches her phototherapy by taking a series of characterizations presented by Havelock Ellis as typical of the sexual invert and pairing them with photographs of herself dressed in ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ costume to ‘challenge the historical iconography of lesbianism’ (Merck in Boffin & Fraser, 1991, p.27). Merck (ibid) listed the phrases from Ellis’s textbook that she chose to use in conjunction with the frames in fig. 18 below. |
… masculine straightforwardness [frame 1] … a decided taste and toleration for cigars [frame 2] ... a disdain for the petty feminine artifices of the toilette [frame 3] … nothing of that sexual shyness and engaging air of weakness and independence which are an invitation to men [frames 4 and 5] (p. 27) In choosing these phrases and illustrating them in this order, Martin has presented not only a visual representation of the stereotypical conception of butch and femme but also makes good on her promise to make ‘explicit the multiplicity of identities that an individual inhabits’ (Martin, op cit, p.01). |
WORDS PICTURES |
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