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The self-portraits of surrealist photographer Claude Cahun demonstrate the undeniable magic of the camera in its emergence as a medium of expression. In the modern age, we are trained to believe that there is no higher truth then the photographic image and that the camera cannot lie. However, the photographer certainly can, and Cahun plays with the viewer’s insistence on determining truth in every image by photographing herself in both masculine and feminine form. Toying with early 20th century perceptions of sexuality, Cahun is the exemplary of the surrealist obsession with the androgynous being. Her undefined sexuality suggests that she is a perfected balance of both genders, representing the masculine and feminine traits present in all beings. Shrouded in disguise, it is never quite obvious who the real Cahun is, and her work suggests that a single image cannot expose us to the complexity of a personality.

-Gabriela June Tully Claymore

Following the release of her celebrated memoir Just Kids in 2010, Patti Smith has rebounded as America’s punk-rock idol. The memoir tells the story of the friendship between the artist herself and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe from the early seventies until his death in 1989. Smith can once again be found on staff recommended and bestseller shelves in bookstores throughout New York City with her latest published work entitled Camera Solo. Camera Solo is a small art book that contains 70 of Smith’s black and white polaroids released by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art after Smith’s exhibition in 2011. For the most part, the photographs are simple still-lives, taken in intimate settings far from the manic punk scene; they document Smith’s home, her travels, and her closest acquaintances. There is nothing inherently remarkable about the photographs in Camera Solo, but paired alongside her music, poetry, and memoir, these images expose just another side of Patti Smith that we might not have otherwise known.

-Gabriela June Tully Claymore

Read More About the Book and Exhibition Here:

http://www.pattismithcamerasolo.com/