Rrose Is a Rrose Is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography [Hardcover]

Jennifer Blessing (Author), Judith Halberstam (Author), Lyle Ashton Harris (Author), Nancy Spector (Author), Carole-Anne Tyler (Author), Sarah Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

Films with cross-dressed protagonists and advertisements featuring androgynous adolescents are just some of the evidence of the contemporary fascination with gender and sexuality. This book provides an art-historical perspective on photography that explores and plays with this controversial, sexy subject. 144 color photos.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The title of this large, provocative book is a combination of two historical wordplays: Gertrude Stein's famous "Rose is a rose is a rose," and Marcel Duchamp's "Rrose Selavy," the name of his imaginary, female alter ego. Spoken, it sounds like "Eros, c'est la vie,"or "Eros, that's life."

The catalog of an exhibition at New York's Guggenheim Museum, Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose is exquisitely, elegantly designed. It includes a wealth of pictures as well as six essays on issues such as surrealist ambiguity, the exhibitionist body art of the 1970s, "queer theory" and "queer reality," and the fluidity of gender identity. With the exception of some 20th-century images of rubber appendages or bound dolls, much of the material has an innocent charm. In one of Alice Austen's Victorian-era self-portraits, for example, she and two friends are dressed as men, with spats, hats, and fake moustaches. One has carefully balanced a walking stick to suggest a male member; the women are cracking up.

The volume also explores the prejudice surrounding the evolution of gender consciousness, and details the heroism of many artists devoted to tolerance, such as Claude Cahun, whom the Nazis sentenced to death. Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose will not change minds, but it will broaden those already open to its subject.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Guggenheim Museum Pubns; 1ST edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810969017
• ISBN-13: 978-0810969018
• Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 10.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,442,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rare and recommended gender-conscious photography, March 24, 2000

By 

"alundy" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rrose Is a Rrose Is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography (Hardcover)

Rrose Is a Rrose Is a Rrose is a valuable contribution to any gender study or discourse. Complete with gender-conscious commentaries and gender-awareness raising photography, Rrose establishes itself as one of the forerunners in photography regarding this seldom considered, but often accessed, aspect of human life, sex, and sexuality.

Rrose... highlights most of the key issues within gender discourse as depicted through photography: gender hierarchy, origination of gender, androgyny and indifferentiation, and gender tension (both masculine and feminine manifestations).

Especially provocative are the works of Matthew Barney. However, all the works included provide a strong case for the necessity of higher states of gender-consciousness.

This book cannot, and should not, be easily dismissed.