About

Claude Cahun, or also known as Lucy Schwob, was born October 25, 1894, in Nantes, France. She died December 8, 1954, in St. Helier, Jersey. Cahun was a French writer, photographer, Surrealist, and performance artist who was largely written out of art history until the late 1980s due to her being an activist during the second world war.

It is thought that Cahun took her first self-portrait at around 1913, a year later publishing her first collaboration with Malherbe under the pseudonyms Claude Corlis and Marcel Moore (the name Malherbe assumed permanently). They contributed a piece titled “Vues et visions” (“Views and Visions”) to the literary journal Mercure de France, the writing by Cahun and the illustration by Moore. Although she had tried out other names, by 1917 she had adopted the pen name Claude Cahun. Moore’s mother and Cahun’s father married in 1917, and the two young women moved in together later becoming lovers.

She is known for her self-portraits that portray her as ambiguously gendered. In taking the gender-neutral forename Claude and by shaving her head, Cahun actively and outwardly rejected social constructions of gender and sexual identity. To Cahun, identity was changeable, or unstable as shown in her self-portraits as she presented herself as a man, a woman and majority of the time androgynously. By fusing several gender stereotypes into a single character, she obfuscated her identity. It is not entirely clear whether Moore was the photographer of Cahun’s “self-portraits” or had some other role in their production. Moore did, in fact, photograph Cahun later on, and those pictures are attributed to her.

photo analysis

This picture showcases Cahun in a wrestlers outfit while holding a weight in her lap, signifying the masculine aspects to the image. The more feminine parts to this image are the hearts on her face and tights as well as the position she’s sitting in. The words on her shirt, ‘don’t kiss me I’m training’, also hint more towards femininity. The whole photograph seems to combine stereotypical aspects of both genders, resulting in a meaningful outcome.

This image leans more towards the concept of masculinity due to the stance she’s taken as well as the suits. Typically, during Cahun’s time suits were often only worn by men thus resulting in a more boxy appearance. The image as a whole is quite powerful, mainly due to the confident stance Cahun takes.