Seeing Queerly: The Emergence of Lesbian Visual Codes in Interwar Paris

What did it mean to look like a lesbian in the interwar years in France, and how did visual codes function in forming that marginalized community so that members could recognize one another? Tirza True Latimer explores how women who identified as woman-loving represented themselves through their art, interrogating the work of four different artists to focus on how their portraiture allowed for and created new possibilities of being for women and, in particular, for lesbians. Latimer's desire to "draw verbal and pictorial images of lesbianism from far-flung sources and diverse orders of representation" combines erudition with a passion for the subject matter, which is evident in the quality of her writing (4). Latimer begins with a historical chapter on the emerging lesbian community of interwar Paris, then follows with three chapters on the works of Romaine Brooks, Claude Cahun/Marcel Moore, and Suzy Solidor, teasing out each artist's strategies of self-representation as forms of resistance to heteronormative dominance while situating their individual strategies in a broader historical context. One interesting assertion of Women Together/Women Apart is that these artists' success was achieved not "despite their lesbianism, but because of it" (8). With intellectual verve, Latimer dissects each woman's artistic production and puts those works in dialogue with the period's other lesbian artistic production. Latimer invites the reader to imagine how these women's artistic production provided visual models that contributed to a sense of collective lesbian identity, one that allowed them to recognize each other.

In the second chapter, Latimer suggests that Brooks's 1923 self-portrait is foundational and perhaps emblematic of the argument that visual representations helped create a legible lesbian identity. The author contends that Brooks's portraiture contributed to lesbian visibility through her interrogation of preconceived notions regarding fashion as an indicator of gender or sexual orientation. Brooks's choice of cross-dressing subjects such as Una, Lady Troubridge, or Hannah Gluckstein ("Gluck"), her nuanced use of color and composition, and her masculinizing contribution to women's fashion were all significant factors in creating new visual codes for women who loved women.

In the third chapter, the regard of the modern woman that distinguishes Brooks's works and preoccupies this author is further complicated by the double gaze(s) of Claude Cahun and her partner, Marcel Moore. Latimer maintains that Cahun and Moore helped expand lesbian visibility by "lesbianizing" gay iconic graphic texts such as Jeune homme nu assis au bord de la mer (Naked Young Man at the Seashore) (73). A lively and productive discussion focuses on the couple's close association with surrealism and its influence on their work, particularly as a way to reconfigure the lesbian body—a body that desires "to become rather than be" (100). Latimer's analysis of Cahun and Moore's collaborative efforts in photography, film, and literature illustrates Moore's influence on Cahun. The ingenuity and contribution of their "dual" artistic production reveals how lesbians in the interwar years were creating and expanding lesbian visibility through resistance to French bourgeois ideas of heteronormativity.

In contrast to the previous artists, Suzy Solidor, the famous Parisian chanteuse, did not actively participate in creating the portraits that molded her celebrity and forged her legend, but manipulated them to her advantage. While Brooks and Cahun designed their images as manifestos of their artistic vision and reflections of their sexuality, Solidor exploited the portraits of herself that pleased her, many of which were painted by artists known to "flirt with sexual perversion and scandal" (120) as a method of commercialization and self-promotion. Thus portraiture allowed Solidor to cement a public myth around herself that was based on the legibility of these paintings as representations of perverse desire. Her portraits as a sailor, mermaid, and garçonne enhanced her commercial appeal as a lesbian spectacle and entertainer. In part because of Solidor's business acumen and self-promotion, her "calculated revelations about her attachments to...