“Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
A Room of One’s Own. Virginal Woolf
–I don’t see what you mean.
–You don’t see what I mean? Well, it has to be a regular practice. That’s what I’m looking for…
–You’re funny, you are… Girls and more girls…Do you know a lot who take photographs of themselves?...Let me think… Like Claude Cahun did?
– No, not necessarily, but that’s what immediately comes to mind: Claude Cahun, La Castiglione, Madame Yevonde (1)…Those who dare to look directly into the lens, shutter release in hand. Without trying to please… to please themselves. Those who are not afraid to be “seen”. Those who are not afraid to “see themselves”. Those who dare to “surprise themselves from behind”.
– I know girls filming themselves, certainly, but fewer who photograph themselves. Surprising, don’t you think? Feminists?
– Not particularly, even if they are known to have “done the work” – do you remember, we took them for harpies, certainly homosexuals, aggressive, obviously ugly and who also got involved in politics! But violent or not, activists or not, it was necessary. And “the work” is far from being over in Europe and elsewhere, we see it every day…We still say to girls that they shouldn’t climb trees, they’ll get dirty and when we see a women’s team training on a football pitch, we see at them as provocateurs. Me first. That’s the worst. And religion…And the “domestic tyranny” Virginia Woolf talks about, still a reality…
– Do you know this document where she is photographed with a turban, a false beard and moustache like a member of the Abyssinian royal family?
– 1910. The Dreadnought hoax? Yes, of course.
