Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Construction Of Gender Through Man Ray's Le Violon D'Ingres, Louise Strandoo

Scholars Week

This paper works to deconstruct the performance of gender created in Man Rays’ famous 1924 Photograph, Le Violon d’Ingres. Utilizing theories of performativity and surrealism, I explore how this image rhetorically constitutes ideals of femininity and normalized bodies. I analyze the semiotic codes of violins and amputation to conceptualize how audiences decode the model in the photograph to be female and the image to be surreal. By offering an intersectional reading of this text, I encourage audiences to consider how photographic images hail specific representations of identity. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of the material body and argue that …