Claude Cahun was a Born-on October 25th in 1894 and was born in Nantes into a Jewish family who was a lesbian transgender which was expressed later on in her life with the photography that she worked with.
Cahuns work was involved around writing, photography and theatre. Claude was mostly remembered for her highly staged self-portraits and tableaux that incorporated the visual aesthetics of Surrealism. During the 1920s Claude produced a large number of self-portraits in various guises such as aviator, dandy doll, body builder, vampire and angel. Most of Claude’s portraits include the artist looking directly at the viewer with her head shaved, most of the time revealing her shoulders, and a blurring of gender indicators and behaviours which goes to undermine the patriarchal gaze.
In 1937 Cahun and Moore settled in Jersey. Which was in the time period of the fall of France and the German occupation of Jersey and other Channel Islands, they became active as resistance workers and propagandists. Against the war, Cahun and Moore produced a lot of anti-German fliers. The couple would then attend many German military events. In Jersey, strategically placing their pamphlets in soldiers’ pockets, on their chairs, and in cigarette boxes for soldiers to find. Cahun and Moore’s resistance efforts weren’t only political but also artistic actions, using their creative talents to manipulate and undermine the German authority. This was done in many ways with Claude dressing up as a transgender taking photos in which would show the mix that she could go between like dressing up as a pretty doll with weights besides her.
A seen in the picture above, it’s quite apparent in stating that you can see the picture was most likely taken in the 1940’s as the picture is in black and white due to the technology in cameras wasn’t as good as it is now. However, this works quite well as the contrast between black and white stands out great with the writing that is written on her top also, the love hearts that are drawn onto Claude’s face. It appears that there was some sort of stand possibly used to keep the camera in position in taking this picture of Claude. The tones in this picture are light bas you can see that everything in the picture is visible, even the background also, you can see that there are light reflections coming off the weights meaning there was some source of light used to make the picture overall stand out. Finally, in this picture Claude is dressed up as a pretty doll with weighs alongside her, this goes to show how she was trying to portray that society shouldn’t judge you for wanting to be free as she seems to be confused in picking between being male or female which could be caused due to society being so judgmental.