Claude Cahun
( 1894 – 1954) was a French photographer and writer. Her work was both
political and personal, and often played with the concepts of gender and
sexuality.
Born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, she was the niece of writer Marcel
Schwob and the great-niece of Orientalist David Léon Cahun. Her mother's
mental problems meant that she was brought up by her maternal grandmother,
Mathilde Cahun.
Around 1919, she settled on the pseudonym Claude Cahun, intentionally
selecting a sexually ambiguous name, after having previously used the
names Claude Courlis and Daniel Douglas. During the early twenties, she
settled in Paris with her life-long partner and step-sister Suzanne
Malherbe. For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Malherbe (who
adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore) collaborated on various written works,
sculptures, and collages. She published articles and novels, notably in
the periodical "Mercure de France", and befriended Henri Michaux, Pierre
Morhange and Robert Desnos. Throughout her life, she worked on a series of
monologues called "Heroines," which was based upon female fairy tale
characters and intertwining them with witty comparisons to the
contemporary image of women. In 1929, a photograph of her was published in
the journal Bifur. The following year, her autobiographical essay
Aveux non avenus, illustrated with photomontages, was published by
Carrefour.
In 1932 she joined the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes
Révolutionnaires, where she met André Breton and René Crevel.
Following this, she started associating with the surrealist group, and
later participated in a number of surrealist exhibitions, including the
London International Surrealist Exhibition (New Burlington Gallery) and
Exposition surréaliste d'Objets (Charles Ratton Gallery, Paris), both in
1936. In 1934, she published a short polemic essay, Les Paris sont
Ouverts, and in 1935 took part in the founding of the left-wing group
Contre Attaque, alongside André Breton and Georges Bataille.
In 1937 Cahun and Malherbe settled in Jersey. Following the outbreak of
World War 2 and the German invasion, they became active as resistance
fighters and propagandists. Fervently against war, the two worked
extensively in producing anti-German fliers. Many were snippets from
English-to-German translations of BBC reports on the Nazi's crimes and
insolence, which were pasted together to create rhythmic poems and harsh
criticism. The couple then dressed up and attended many German military
events in Jersey, strategically placing them in soldier's pockets, on
their chairs, etc. Also, fliers were inconspicuously crumpled up and
thrown into cars and windows. In many ways, Cahun and Malherbe's
resistance efforts were not only political but artistic actions, using
their creative talents to manipulate and undermine the authority which
they despised. In many ways, Cahun's life's work was focused on
undermining a certain authority, however her specific resistance fighting
targeted a physically dangerous threat. In 1944 they were arrested and
sentenced to death, but the sentences were never carried out. However,
Cahun's health never recovered from her treatment in jail, and she died in
1954.
In many ways, Cahun's life was marked by a sense of role reversal, and
her public identity became a commentary upon not only her own, but the
public's notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. Her adoption of
a sexually ambiguous name, and her androgynous self-portraits display a
revolutionay way of thinking and creating, experimenting with her
audience's understanding of photography as a documentation of reality. Her
poetry challenged gender roles and attacked the increasingly modern
world's social and economic boundaries. Also Cahun's participation in the
Parisian Surrealist movement diversified the group's artwork and ushered
in new representations. Where most Surrealist artists were men, and their
primary images were of women as isolated symbols of eroticism, Cahun
epitomized the chameleonic and multiple possibilities of the female
identity. Her photographs, writings, and general life as an artistic and
political revolutionary continue to influence countless artists, namely
Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin. Claude Cahun is often claimed today as a
historical example of a lesbian or queer woman, but some are now claiming
Cahun as a transgender person on the female-to-male spectrum. Claude Cahun
is seen by some as a transgender photographer whose works precede that of
Loren Cameron's, a contemporary transgender photographer who, like Cahun,
focuses on the self.
