Artist statement: Les Blanche Banques is from a forthcoming series that responds to an archive of photographs created by French avant-garde artist Claude Cahun, held in Jersey, Channel Islands, United Kingdom.
My project began as an exploration of the sites that Cahun inhabited and imaged on the island during the last 20 years of her life, considering her engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey. Like Cahun, in the photographs I have made, I depict my body in relation to site and place; in these instances the coastal geography and ancient Neolithic ritual monuments in Jersey. Les Blanche Banques depicts my interaction with a Neolithic menhir and the remains of a burial chamber in the distance.
My practice is invested in the feminist act of self-representation; this project draws connections between my performances of an expanding vocabulary of gesture in ancient and contested sites of meaning, with Cahun’s overtly performing body expressing a multiplicity of identity.
www.clarerae.com
Gelatin silver prints are black-and-white photographic prints that have been created using papers coated with an emulsion of gelatin and light-sensitive silver salts. After the papers are briefly exposed to light (usually through a negative), a chemical developer renders the latent image as reduced silver, which is then fixed and washed. This technique was first introduced in the 1870s and is still used today. Most twentieth-century black-and-white photographs are gelatin silver prints. They are known for being highly detailed and sharply defined prints with a distinguishable smooth, even image surface.
