Cahun’s work:
Early life:
Claude Cahun, born with the name ‘Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob’, was a French writer, sculptor and photographer. Cahun was born into a wealthy Jewish family. In her late teens and early twenties Cahun had been looking for a new, gender-neutral name for a while. Around 1914, she changed her name to Claude Cahun. Cahun is most known for her self-portraits that portray her as ambiguously gendered and as different characters. Cahun started taking her first self-portraits around 1912, when she was 18, and continued taking images of herself throughout the 1930s, creating a lifelong obsession with examining gender, using herself as subject. Marcel Moore, born Suzanne Alberte Malherbe, and Cahun met when they were only 17 and 15. From this onwards, they created an artistic and romantic partnership together. The two became step-sisters in 1917 after Cahun’s divorced father and Moore’s widowed mother married. During the early 1920s, they settled in Paris together. She and Moore then returned to Jersey to live, taking up their old names and letting people assume they were sisters. For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Moore collaborated on various written works, sculptures, photomontages and collages.
Work:
Most of Cahun’s work was often collaborated with Marcel Moore, her long-life partner. Cahun used her artwork as a parallel to her real life. In an untitled portrait from 1921–22, Cahun erased the visible traces of femininity by shaving her head, wearing masculine clothes like a dinner suit, and avoiding jewellery and makeup. Since Cahun’s photographic self-portraits were never publicly exhibited, art historians have asked whether these photographs were intended for public viewing at all. In this particular image, Cahun’s facial expression intends to make the audience feel uncomfortable. She is intensely staring into the camera and it looks as though her eyesight is towards the photographer, and not the viewers.
Artist inspiration
For all of my photoshoots, I was inspired by Claude Cahun. I have picked this particular photo because we tried to recreate one of Cahun’s artworks as much as possible. As you can see, both of these images are in black and white, and the subject holds a miserable face towards the camera. I think this is really effective as it makes the viewer question what the story behind the image is.