The exhibition HE / SHE / THEY currently on display at Rose Gallery, collects the work of various photographers who utilize their own and others’ image to find what lies beyond the constructs of prescribed gender and sexual identity.
The show features work from Diane Arbus, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Nancy Burson, Antonio Caballero, Jo Ann Callis, Graciela Iturbide, Wayne Lawrence, Nikki S. Lee, Yasumasa Morimura, Cristina Garcia Rodero, Tomoko Sawada and Katsumi Watanabe.
Performance for the camera—and performing in life—involves mastering oneself. Yet identity exists within a plethora of expectations. Performing does not entail that each movement is made for the camera; rather, people create their identity and perform themselves through the participation in or negation of cultural roles. In the 1960s, Diane Arbus’ documentary work in New York and Katsumi Watanabe’s portraits in Tokyo both explored the lives of the ‘other:’ those who live the roles not prescribed to their bodies. Female impersonators, drag queens and androgynous people strike the eye as the juxtaposition between the expected and their choice of being defies gender expectations. Katsumi Watanabe’s photographs of drag queens, prostitutes, gangsters, and entertainers, created as portraits for the subjects themselves, are filled with the candid uniqueness of each sitter as they saw themselves, regardless of gender constructs.
Not always a question of the two distinct binaries of male and female, gender has existed with more fluidity in many societies. Long before the 2015 gay marriage ruling in the United States, the Navajo nation has supported various genders and sexualities; they believed in the presence of “two-spirit” individuals: those who do not identify with male or female roles. In Juchitán, the “queer paradise,” Graciela Iturbide photographed Magnolia, who identified as Muxe, Zapoteca for homosexual and genderqueer. Magnolia’s self-expressive portraits contrast with Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s portraits of Salvador Novo and Xavier Villaurrutia, which exert a masculine and refined image of the two Mexican writes.
Addressing the way female sexuality is often conflated with a certain form of femininity, Jo Ann Callis creates images that redefine gendered-sexuality. In Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag remarks that “The most refined form of sexual attractiveness (as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure) consists in going against the grain of one's sex.” While Caballero’s collected nudes emphasize objectified distinctly feminine sexuality, Callis’ Early Color Portfolio mystifies and the body in erotically charged compositions that blur the lines of sexuality and gender. While Burson’s photographs give life to often-sexualized plastic barbies, the bodies in Callis’ photographs distill sexuality into a doll-like form, as if still lives of feminine, masculine and androgynous sexuality.
HE / SHE / THEY is on view through November 12, 2016
