masquerade

In Disguise – Things Are Not Always What They Seem
A brief was set to produce a photographic images of portraits that explore the performative aspects related the presentation of the self (self masquerade). According to the dictionary, it defines ‘Masquerade’ as a disguise or false outward show; a false pretenses or a false character, disguising oneself with a mask or to put on a deceptive appearance.

I have chosen to explore and engage with the concepts of both the masquerade as a theoretical model to interpret photographically the staging of the self (me) and also the relationship of gender performance.

My biggest main influences were through works of French Surrealist photographer and writer, Claude Cahun (1894- 1954) on gender and sexuality and with the theoretical knowledge on gender by American philosopher, Judith Butler. In Butler’s book published in 1990, ‘Gender Trouble’, she theorizes gender, along with sex and sexuality as ‘performative’. Butler explores the nature of coherence in the categories; sex, gender and sexuality, for example, of masculine gender and heterosexual desire in male bodies are culturally constructed through the repetition of stylized acts in time. Butler argues that by ‘deconstructing’ the way we look at gender we might move towards a new equality where people are not restricted by masculine or feminine gender roles.

Butler’s main argument is that as opposed to being ‘fixed attribute in a person, gender should be seen as a fluid variable which shifts and changed in different contexts and at different times”, rather than being masculine/feminine gender binary, gender should be seen as fluid, variable; the way we behave at different times and in different situations rather than who we are.

“When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.” (Butler, 1990, p.6).
Butler argues ‘gender trouble’ is a way of challenging traditional notions of gender identities. Butler’s main metaphor for this is ‘drag’, from performing as the opposite sex by dressing up and applying make-up, drag artists are subverting ideas of gender norms, challenging the “constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity” (Butler, 1990, p.148). She also argues that we all put on a gender performance but it is not a question of whether to do a gender performance, but what form that performance will take. By choosing to be different about it, we might work to change gender norms and the binary understanding of masculinity and femininity.
Claude Cahun uses her photographic work which focuses mainly on the self; in exploring how one’s body can be used to challenge normative views of women, using masks, make-up and costumes. Claude Cahun is often claimed today as a historical example of a lesbian or queer woman, but some are now claiming Cahun as a transgender person on the female-to-male spectrum.
Both of my images were inspired by Claude Cahun’s idea of using mirrors (Claude Cahun Self-portrait, 1928, Black-and-white photograph, Collection Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France); I thought this would be an interesting and uncanny way of portraying one self’s performance through a reflection.

‘Painting the Real Picture’
This piece of work, pictures a man applying red lipstick with the help of a compact mirror, in particular was inspired by Cahun’s Self-Portrait, C 1927, where she masks herself into a different identity to represent a visual conception about femininity hence the theatrical make-up. I experimented using my male model acting out as a ‘transgender’ using a red lipstick, in attempt to present a performance of the opposite gender, the female, or in this sense his ‘real’ gender identity.
Transgender is a term used to describe people whose gender identity (male or female) or gender expression differs from that usually associated with their birth sex. Transgender can be described as those whose identity, appearance, or behaviour falls outside of conventional gender norms, which, ‘Painting the Real Picture’ clearly demonstrates. You can clearly see this is a man from the masculine facial features and the facial hairs and moustache reflected in the compact mirror. The whole image was de-saturated into black and white tone, except the red lipstick to emphasize the stereotypical techniques used in creating a femininity appearance.
In this experiment, I wanted to explore the differences between sex and gender, as ‘sex’ associates to attributes such as sex chromosomes, hormones and internal reproductive structures, etc. whereas ‘gender’ refers to the ways people act or perform and feel about themselves.

‘Putting On a Show – You Think You Know. But you’ve No Idea’
The second is much more personal as it represents my personal performance in putting on a ‘disguise’ of the real self. It shows me reluctantly about to put on a mask, my ‘happy self’ or my masquerade. I took shots of myself by the mirror looking rather sad and then another shot of me looking happy, I then edited on Adobe Photoshop creating the happy face as the ‘mask’ and pasted it onto the portrait of me looking sad. I experimented with different techniques and lighting to create a sense of loneliness and emptiness to demonstrate the lengths I have to endure to create this ‘happy act’ of such masquerade performance. The ‘happy’ self is a false show, just a concealment of the ‘sad’ and true self at that time.

Overall, although both works contradicts each other, one is putting on the real show (man with lipstick) and the other, putting on a false show (girl with mask), both are putting on a performance of the ‘self’, their identity is performatively constituted by expressions. Concepts of the mirror, mask, masquerade, double, uncanny, and performativity were experimented with the aid of traditional as well as postmodern and feminist expressions understanding from my research.

Bibliography:
http://photographicart.wordpress.com
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masquerade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(clothing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dressing

http://www.apa.org/topics/transgender.html

http://dictionary.reference.com/#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Cahun

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm

www.preview-art.com/features/actingup.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler

http://www.gurl.com/showoff/spotlight/pages/0,,644913,00.html

http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/publications/papers/journal2/acrobat_files/conley_article.pdf.

www.collectionscanada.ca/…/atrium-12b.htm

Butler, Judith (1990), Gender Trouble: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, London.