Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography

by Nancy Spector

The Guggenheim's classic study of photo-based artworks that question gender identity is back in print at last. This important volume, whose title combines Gertrude Stein's famous motto, "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," with the name of Marcel Duchamp's feminine alter ego, Rrose Selavy, features portraits, self-portraits and photomontages in which the gender of the subject is highlighted through performance for the camera or through technical manipulation of the image. In many of the works, photography's strong aura of realism and objectivity promotes a fantasy of total gender transformation. In other pieces, the photographic representation articulates an incongruity between the posing body and its assumed costume. Features work by Cecil Beaton, Brassa‘, Claude Cahun, Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Hàch, Man Ray, Janine Antoni, Matthew Barney, Nan Goldin, Lyle Ashton Harris, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager, Yasumasa Morimura, Catherine Opie, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman, Inez van Lamsweerde and Andy Warhol.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, Art, LGBT, Queer

224 pages, Hardcover

Published August 15, 2006

Reviews

[Frida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay first of all, this book is great. I love it and it even gave me new artists to obsess over. Alright. This book is a mix of queer theory and art critique. The title is compossed of Marcel Duchamp’s female alter ego “Rrose Sélavy” and Gertrude Stein’s famous line “Rose is a rose is a rose”. So naturally when I first saw it, I was instantly compelled – and not disappointed.

In this book curator Jennifer Blessing, together with five other authors and theorists, tries to explore the meaning of gender expression and identity within the realm of photography and art. It talks about category crossers, gender failures/deviants/fucks, drag kings, ftm and mtf bodies and their excessive strangeness (in the best possible way) which ought to be preserved. I would say that this book in general is a plea for strangeness, and a praise for artistic gender transgression away from binary norms. It is about showing that masculinity does not belong to men, but instead can be produced and occupied by other genders and minority identities as well. And that the ambiguity of femininity can be (is being) subverted, challenged and changed. The artists want to show the unfixity of gender and how easily the heteronormative binary system can be destabilized and ultimately fall apart – even if it is just one spectator standing in front of a photograph, wondering if s/he is looking at a man, or a woman, or..

"In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above." - Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

[Cambra]

I thought it fitting that the very first essay I read in this was by the person who is responsible for my obsession with gender studies. Thanks Jack!

[Masha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally not a fan of theory, but this is a banging exception. Makes the brain click and whirr very nicely.

[Cecelia]

I had to read it for a class and I was wonderfully suprised by it. Compared to the other things we read it was extremly interesting and it has wonderful images.