Confronting the Clichés of Femininity: Contemporary Photographer Eisner-Kleyle’s We Were Not Born Women

Abstract

The contemporary American photographer Jessie Eisner-Kleyle uses the trope of metonymy to visualize femininity and the construction of gender in her series of digital images, We Were Not Born Women (2011). The series features the material trappings of femininity: eyelash curlers, red nail polish, brassiere, and high-heeled shoes. These objects represent items that women have claimed as feminine markers. In creating her series, Eisner-Kleyle posted a call for submissions, asking women to send verbal narratives of their “feminine” objects. Eisner-Kleyle then translated the submissions into what she terms “object portraiture,” using a scanner as a substitute camera. The artistic process and resulting series turns on the multiple connotations of the term cliché. From the objects figured, to the stereotypes they represent, to Eisner-Kleyle’s translation of verbal narratives to two-dimensional prints, We Were Not Born Women explores gender norms using a layered aesthetic that moves between media and across varied groups of participants. The article will investigate We Were Not Born Women: the digital prints, the artistic processes, and the resulting museum show, as to examine contemporary photography’s portrait of gender as it occurs at the crossings between representation and object, narrative and image, conformity and confrontation.