Thomas Weisskopf: Cut

Thomas Weisskopf: untitled 001

Let's stick to the recent theme of portrait series mixed up with Switzerland a little longer, and introduce Thomas Weisskopf. This Swiss photographer provides the extensive series Cut, an unequivocal commentary on identity, beauty standards and orientalism. He photographed trans women and transvestites from Thailand for his portraits, in the same way continually: a simple dark blue background, the focus on the naked torsos - cut off across the chest, mostly just a hint of breasts - and on the faces, enhanced with make-up, framed by well-cared hair, the gaze often drifting into the unknown around the lens.

Weisskopf became acquainted with many of his subjects during his stays in Bangkok, and when you have a look at the index on his gallery's website, it becomes a sea of women photographed in the same way, united by fairly many attributes: the make-up, the hair, the full, sensual lips and so on. While each of the portraits shows as an individual, they become an anonymous mass, like-minded and forced into line.

The title Cut refers, of course, to the sex re-assignment surgery many of the women supposedly underwent. It can also stand for the metaphorical cut in the women's lives, the change from a outwardly male appearance to a full female identity. For Maja Peter it further indicates the way in which "illusion and reality blend in a scintillating semblance into which yearning is etched like a wound". But what is the root of this yearning, and what do these women desire? Do they, on the basis that they look, to an untrained eye, very much alike, desire the same things, or is the portrait in the end about the individual again?

Cut is certainly multi-layered. Weisskopf's subjects are exposed to the gaze of others - and there is the crux of it. As much as the series is about the quest for self-identity, it also hits on the fulfillment through others, and on the beauty standards these women pursue in order to please (and make money, presumably). It is a 'standardised femininity', achieved through facial feminisation surgery (another cut!), and make-up - prominently featured in these images. Trans women underly the struggle for beauty in a world in which beauty is defined by the patriarchal system just like most other women.

And this is where yet another layer comes to play: Who, in particular, sets these beauty standards? It is the mighty white man from the Western world - the light skin tones, the dyed hair, the accentuated big eyes hint to it. Without claiming that all of Weisskopf's subjects are prostitutes (they are not), it remains a fact that the sex industry gains Thailand up to $4 billion every year, and that the clients' wishes have subtly taken over the traditional value of feminine beauty in Thai culture.

Therefore another, and the most interesting, layer of Weisskopf's work is the commentary on the exploitative gaze on what seems exotic to the viewer. Presumably the majority of Weisskopf's audience is white and middle class - as is the author of this blog. It is exactly this audience which is establishing and re-enforcing the beauty standards Weisskopf's women follow - and which is mostly (sadly) not able to tell one Asian women apart from another. That is why one tends to get the terrible impression of uniformity when seeing too many of the Cut images at once. Peter Stohler asks the question: "How 'individually' can 'exotic' people be shown in photographs?" It is this audience which is responsible for the cut - not the literal, but the metaphorical one, the gap between self-identity and identity of the mass, self-fulfillment and the desire to please others. 

Cut is not as much about personality as, for example, Zanele Muholi's portraits. Weisskopf does not even give us the names of the women. It remains a meditation on the meaning of the individual in a uniform world with homogenous requirements. And yet, finally, Weisskopf takes us back to the individual. It is almost an invitation to look longer at one of the many singular portraits, engage with one of the women, in the helpless attempt to compensate for the negligence. 

Thomas Weisskopf: untitled 037