Gallery visit

The photographers gallery, Under Cover. A secret history of cross – dressers.

This exhibition is drawn from the personal archives of filmmaker and
photography collector Sebastien Lifshitz. I have chosen this exhibition because it
is all about breaking society’s social structures by exploring gender non-
conformity and cross-dressing. In my project so far I have been mainly focusing
on the society’s view of women, but when I found this exhibition I thought it be
really interesting to explore how the idea of gender non-conformity would
impact society. Gender non-confromity and cross-dressing breaks down the
barriers that society has built, this starts to break the structures of societal
norms. A social norm is the accepted behavior that an induvidual is expected to
conform to in a particular group, community, or culture. The photographs date
from 1880 onwards, for a man to dress ‘like a women’ would have been unheard
of during this time. The theme of this exhibition is to celebrate individuality and
to embrace change and to try different things in order to break the mould of
society.

The photographers
gallery website states
that; ‘Lifshitz’s was to
explore a much more
nuanced exploration of
cross-dressing culture,
not least by interrogating
the assumptions we make
about gender’. I agree
with this as you can really
this from the photographs
that Lifshitz has chosen.
Most of these
photographs were taken
in underground basements in secret, but this really shows a sense of community
all brought together through their different styles and attitudes, also shows
individuals and groups from different classes, professions, gender and
nationalities. Their only commonality is that they dared to play with dress codes
and gender stereotypes in front of a camera, they’re not shy to be themselves
and this really shows in each photograph.

These are my 3 favourite works from the exhibition

I chose these three as my
favourite because I like the
way each photograph tells a
story for each person it. The
first photograph has a really
interesting composition as
the person is sat side profile
but the model’s face is facing
the camera but not looking
directly at the lense, the
overall feel of this
photograph is that the model
feel completely comftable
which I really liked.

I chose this second

photograph as I really liked
the way you could see the
process of this person
changing from ‘woman’ to
‘man’. The fact that there are
two of the same image next to
each other is really
interesting this could have
been done to really
emphasise the intensiveness
and liberation of the simple
act of dressing differently.

Thirdly I chose this

photograph as again the
model seems really comftable
in their own skin and isn’t
ashamed to be themselves. I
also really the vantage point
at which this photograph is
taken at. Its taken at a slight
worms eye vantage the
camera seems to be pointing
up at the model and the
model is looking down at the
camera.
The layout of the exhibition was quite simple each photograph was framed in a
white photo frame either next to each other, or some were arranged as a group. I

think this was done on purpose not to over

complicate anything so the focus isn’t taken
away from the beauty and simplicity of the
photographs.

As you can see from this image these

photographs have been arranged to
show that they are a collection and
must be viewed together.