Although she never publicly acknowledged her sexual preference, Henri's bisexuality was confirmed after her death in interviews with her friends. It appears her most significant and lasting relationship was with her fellow artist and occasional model, Margarete Schall, with whom she lived in Paris.
Although she always insisted that her images were merely formalist exercises and should not be analyzed for content, Henri had a unique means of addressing gender and sexuality in her photography. Her many self-portraits, for example, demonstrate how she emphasized her female-ness to a virtually theatrical extent.
With her bobbed haircut, dramatic makeup, and fanciful fashion sense, in these portraits Henri can be read as the prototypical neue Frau (new woman)--an individual who embraced modernity to challenge traditional gender roles without nullifying the notion of gender difference. Rather than defy the binary codes of gender via androgyny or cross-dressing (as did her contemporaries Marcel Duchamp and Claude Cahun), Henri preferred to masquerade her given sex, thereby heightening its performative aspects.
Henri's malleable sexual identity manifested itself within her photographs, which demonstrate not only her distinctively modern appearance, but include compositional references to the constructed nature of gender as well. This aspect of her photography is most immediately visible in her best-known image, a 1928 self-portrait in which Henri appears in a long, vertical mirror with two metallic balls at its base. The composition has been given multiple interpretations by various art historians; some see it as unequivocally phallic, while others point to the vaginal nature of the mirror's depth and the breast-like appearance of the metallic balls.
Florence Henri (ΗΠΑ, 1893-1982)
Although she never publicly acknowledged her sexual preference, Henri's bisexuality was confirmed after her death in interviews with her friends. It appears her most significant and lasting relationship was with her fellow artist and occasional model, Margarete Schall, with whom she lived in Paris.
ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφήAlthough she always insisted that her images were merely formalist exercises and should not be analyzed for content, Henri had a unique means of addressing gender and sexuality in her photography. Her many self-portraits, for example, demonstrate how she emphasized her female-ness to a virtually theatrical extent.
With her bobbed haircut, dramatic makeup, and fanciful fashion sense, in these portraits Henri can be read as the prototypical neue Frau (new woman)--an individual who embraced modernity to challenge traditional gender roles without nullifying the notion of gender difference. Rather than defy the binary codes of gender via androgyny or cross-dressing (as did her contemporaries Marcel Duchamp and Claude Cahun), Henri preferred to masquerade her given sex, thereby heightening its performative aspects.
Henri's malleable sexual identity manifested itself within her photographs, which demonstrate not only her distinctively modern appearance, but include compositional references to the constructed nature of gender as well. This aspect of her photography is most immediately visible in her best-known image, a 1928 self-portrait in which Henri appears in a long, vertical mirror with two metallic balls at its base. The composition has been given multiple interpretations by various art historians; some see it as unequivocally phallic, while others point to the vaginal nature of the mirror's depth and the breast-like appearance of the metallic balls.
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