Ergy Landau, Autoportrait, 1932
The photograph is obviously a very carefully prepared mise en scène, photographed by an assistant and following in the “painter and model” tradition. What is particularly striking about this photograph is that the photographer not only quite literally puts herself on the same level as the female model but also turns her face away from the camera. Unlike her male counterparts in this traditionally male genre of photography, the nude model in this photograph is not a passive object that subjects itself to the active, determining male gaze but rather a partner who not only enters into a visual dialogue with the photographer but also takes an active and determining part in the mise en scène. At the very moment the photograph is taken, the viewer’s gaze is made to perform a peculiar turn of direction, for just as the photographer is focussing her camera on the naked body of the model in front of her, the latter appears blurred in the photograph, while the dressed body of the photographer is absolutely sharp. Was it the photographer’s wish to remain anonymous when photographing another person in the nude – Florence Henri, for example, always spoke of her nude photographs in “Paris Sex Appeal” with a certain embarrassment, but somewhat coquettishly all the same – or was it her intention to liberate the scene from all sexual connotations and merely document it as a working situation which obliged her to turn her back on the camera?
— Herbert Molderings & Barbara Mülhens-Molderings, Mirrors, Masks and Spaces. Self-portraits by Women Photographers in the twenties and thirties
(Thanks to garconniere for the link; see also her writing on/recommended readings for self-portraiture in her most excellent blog)