This image caught my attention almost immediately. At first glance I felt like there was something slightly peculiar. I realized after looking at it for a few seconds that it was a portrait of three women.The photographer's name is Frances Benjamin Johnston. This is one of her many self portraits dressed as a man. This is very intriguing to me.
I researched her a little bit on the internet and she keeps coming up in LGBTQ websites. There is some suspect that she may have been a lesbian. I know for sure that she must have been a feminist. Her self portraits brought up a lot of issues with equality of women in that time. Women never wore the pants but here she donned a whole outfit and a mustache.
When you think about documentation, think of FBJ's iamges as a document that tells us that women were exploring gender and identity long before we feminism. Can one be separate from the other?
ReplyDeleteI guess that these things can sort of go hand in hand. It does show that women were interested in exploring gender...Its an interesting launching point into transgender ftm studies.
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