Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll. The Jersey Heritage Trust collection represents the largest repository of the artistic work of Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and she was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis, who requisitioned their home. Cahun died in 1954 of ill health (some contribute this to her time in German captivity) and Moore killed herself in 1972. They  are both buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.

“Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”

In this image, Cahun has shaved her head and is dressed in men’s clothing. She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”1 (Claude Cahun, Disavowals, London 2007, p.183)

mood board:

mind maps:

Her images:

where I will take the shoot:

my plan:

For this shoot I am going to use my sister and/or one of my friends as the models as I think they will look as similar to the ones in Rae’s images. I am going to use an empty room in my house, an art or dance studio or a stair case/ stairwell using props like a mirror and camera to get them to look like hers. I may also go out to the cliff paths or bunkers to try and re create the two of her images that are outside. Hopefully I will make the images look eerie and simple like her are as I think he images are very effective.

Identity Politics

Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these identities.

The term was first used by the Combahee River Collective, a Black feminist lesbian socialist organization active in Boston from 1974 to 1980, in 1977. It was used all over by the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in various cases with radically different connotations depending upon the term’s context. It has gained currency with the emergence of social activism, manifesting in various dialogues within the feminist, American civil rights, and LGBT movements, disabled groups, as well as multiple nationalist and postcolonial organizations, for example, the Black Lives Matter movement.

Cultural Wars

A culture war is a cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices. It commonly refers to topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values. Contemporary politics in the United States is often described as involving a “culture war.” The central claim of those describing a culture war is that the major political cleavage in contemporary American politics is no longer economic class, race, gender, geographical region, or any of the many “social structural” differences that divide our population. Rather, the idea is that a major realignment of sensibilities and controversial issues has occurred since the 1960s, and now the body politic is rent by a cultural conflict in which values, moral codes, and lifestyles are the primary objects of contention. Issues such as abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and drug use are the typical points of culture wars contention; others have used the phrase to discuss issues of multiculturalism, diversity, and school curricula. Religious commitments, symbols, and groups have been strongly connected to culture wars politics.

In her photographic practice Clare explores ideas of performance and gesture to interrogate and subvert dominant modes of representation. Her work is informed by feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body, usually the artists’ own.

Recent projects have engaged with site specificity, involving works that are captured and displayed within the same environment. A central interest within her practice is the exploration of performance documentation, specifically how the camera can act as a collaborator, rather than mute witness, to the performer.

In this image from Clare Rae the focal point of the image is the lady on the chair. The rule of thirds is used to centre the lady in the middle of the image, because there is nothing else in the image it means that we are only looking at the woman. The room being bland and empty gets us to think about the emotions that the lady may feeling such as lonely, sad and maybe lost. The dull light coming from the window creates a sad solemn feeling in the image. It may also having something to do with the feminist theory as it says ‘Her work is informed by feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body’. This can relate to the image above as the woman is stood leaning in an awkward position.

Here are some images that will inspire me in my attempts to create work that fits the ‘Identity’ brief.

For my self-portraiture project, I plan to shoot in the school’s studio primarily so that I can get the best possible lighting, and so that I can achieve a cleaner, hospital-like setting for the images I want to take for one of my pieces that I’ve planned. Using the studio, I can also get shots of myself wearing my motorcycle gear for that same piece, which could save me time in finding the right space to do it outside of school.

In addition, I would like to get a large variety of different shots of myself in my bedroom, to provide insight on how I live, who I am and what I do outside of school. As my bedroom window faces to the west, I may try to get a shoot done during the golden hour to achieve softer, warmer tones across my images. I could also use my key light, or the different coloured lights in my room to create different effects and to emphasise some of these hues for a more visually appealing piece.

I will be using my own camera and telephoto lens for these shoots, and most likely a tripod to set them up. On my camera, the settings shouldn’t be too different from normal – on manual and adjusted to the environment I shoot in (should be a relatively bright environment) – and I don’t think I have anything in particular I want to experiment with for this.

About Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor, and writer. Cahun is best known as a writer and self-portraitist, who assumed a variety of performative personae. She was born on the 25th of October, 1894 in Nantes, France and sadly passed away on the 8th of December, 1954 in St. Helier, Jersey.

Claude Cahun’s brith name was Lucy Schwob, however she became Claude Cahun in 1914. In 1937, she moved to Jersey with her partner and stepsister Marcel Moore (aka Suzanne Malherbe) since it was a place they often visited during their childhood.

A few years after, she became an activist due to the German Occupation that occurred in Jersey from 1940- 1945, resisting against the Nazis. For example, Cahun and her partner created the persona of ‘Der Soldat Ohne Namen’ (‘The Soldier Without a Name’) cast as a mysterious German soldier intent on inspiring rebellion from within the army by pointing out the idiocy of war and ridiculing the actions of the German commanders. These words of resistance were written onto sheets of tissue paper and either posted through the windows of German staff cars, or left in cigarette packets in the hope that someone would pick them up looking for an increasingly scarce smoke.

They were both imprisoned and sentenced to death for listening to the BBC in 1944, however she managed to survive the prison and die in a much more peaceful way due to health issues in 1954, Moore committing suicide in in 1972.

During her life, she wasn’t known as an artist and it was not until the late 1980s where her work was discovered by the jersey heritage and is kept by the organisation to this day.

“Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces.”

– Claude Cahun

The Femininity and Masculinity of Claude Cahun

Throughout her life, Cahun challenged the stereotypes surrounding the ideas of masculinity and femininity, shaving her head and dressing in male attire to defy the traditional ideology about femininity and beauty in women. One of the main ways she portrayed her ambiguity was by choosing the name Claude, that in French could refer to either a man or a woman. She took the last name from her grandmother Mathilda Cahun. In some photos she portrayed herself as a woman, in some a man, and in other a bit of both. Even decades after her death she remains a famous artist and influencer that is followed by art historians, feminists and people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community.

“It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me”

– Claude Cahun from her book ‘Aveux non Avenus’ or in English ‘Disavowals’

Her Work

A mixture of presenting herself both as masculine and feminine, breaking gender stereotypes and opposing traditional views of femininity/ masculinity.

who was she:

Cahun was a French realist photographer, sculptor and writer. She attended a private school in surrey and then university in Paris. In 1912 she began making self portraits and continued throughout the 1930’s. She lived in Jersey with her partner and step sister for many years, which is why the Jersey heritage trust collection have made the effort to keep and protect her work. She unfortunately was sentenced to death in 1944 for some of her activities during the occupation, yet she managed to survive and until the 1980’s she was forgotten about. Much of her and he partners work was destroyed by by the Nazis who entered their home. Claude died due to ill health in 1954 and her partner then ender her life in 1972. Many found Claude to be a inspirational photographer and felt that her image were very powerful with meaningful messages.

I like the style of her images as I think that they portray a strong message that you don’t necessarily only have characteristic of only femininity or masculinity but you can have some of both. I also like how they are in black and white as I think it gives the images more definition and depth, as well as it defined the details. I am inspired by her to take some images like this myself as I think I could put my own twist on them to make them engaging.

mood board:

image analysis:

Claude Cahun, born in 1894, was a French photographer and activist, known for her self-portraits and radical political activism, challenging norms of gender and sexuality.

Cahun, born Lucy Schwob, used photography as a means of self-expression, often using elaborate and outlandish costumes and props to create both intriguing and surreal imagery. Their step-sister – and partner – Suzanne Malherbe, frequently appeared in Cahun’s works, such as in the image above, where they’d shaved their heads and eyebrows to strip them of all remnants of their identities, leaving them mere husks. Malherbe and Cahun worked as part of the French Resistance during WWII, which deeply influenced her work as she developed as an artist. This as a whole creates connotations to the way the Jewish people were treated in the concentration camps during World War II, which would’ve been around the time this was taken – turning this piece into a political protest against the atrocities committed by the Nazi party during this time.

Inspired by the Greek Myth of Narcissus, Cahun’s work primarily revolved around a sense of self and the concept that art could only be created through self-exploration. This is why I think Cahun’s photography is a perfect reference for this project, and I plan to create at least one somewhat similar piece in the style of their work.

For this shoot, we experimented with the gel filters again, giving most of my images a green tint that didn’t end up being too flattering. The first set of photographs we took with the regular studio lighting ended up being a lot better for the diamond cameos, so I was more driven to use them.

We also played around with longer exposures to capture Wiktoria’s movements as we shot these photos, which turned out quite well for the most part.

For the diamond cameo, I had to select four images of Wiktoria looking in four different directions – up, down, left and right. I didn’t have one of her looking down that I could use so I decided to use a photo of her looking straight into the camera lens instead for when I created the diamond cameo in Photoshop.

These were my final results for the multiple exposures part of the shoot. They have this almost supernatural element to them, following Wiktoria’s movement as a blur through the background. I’m intrigued by this style and may attempt to use it in later projects if I have the chance.

The rest of the final products from this shoot are necessary to create my actual diamond cameo. I need to sort four of them into a Photoshop document – each one looking in a different direction (up, down, left, right).

I took four of these final images and organised them together in Photoshop, using the oval selection tool to remove the borders of the photographs.

After removing and cropping all the borders, I had what I needed. However, I wanted to recreate the vintage aesthetic of classic diamond cameos, so I placed an orange-yellow tint across the whole canvas, increased the sharpness and added some grain.

Finally, I was left with this. I’m quite proud of it and may also want to do something similar in future projects. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough images to use for the bottom part of the diamond cameo, so I used a different one from earlier in the shoot that actually wraps the piece up better than what I think the photo I actually needed would have done.