Carol, art director in advertising
Canadian photographer Melanie Gillis' gender bending project Animus consists of images of females as they appear in their everyday lives alongside shots of them in drag. The name of the series is a reference to Carl Jung. The anima and animus are elements of Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. The unconscious of the male contains a feminine inner personality called the anima; the female's masculine inner personality is the animus.
Gillis' series features diptych images of the feminine and masculine sides of the subects opposite each other. The photographer captured the women in their personal or professional spaces and used their wardrobes and ideas for the shoot. Thus, in a way, the masculine side of each woman was coaxed out in the form of creative ideas as to how they'd style themselves as masculine.
See the rest of the series here.
Marta, photographer