Claude Cahun

images by Claude Cahun

Claude Cahun was a French surrealist photographer, sculptor and writer. Cahun was widely known for her self portraits where she crosses the gender boundary’s between male and female, which challenged the strict gender roles at the time. Cahun had a rather androgynous look which she used to help her switch between the gender, which was new for the time as there were stereotypical gender roles, and the thought for people being gender fluid or transgender or anything like that was not thought of. Cahun writes: “Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me. However, Cahun mainly referred to herself using grammatically feminine words however described her gender as gender fluid.

She was born 25th of October 1894 in Nantes to a well-off Jewish family. When Cahun was four years old her mother unfortunately was suffering of a mental illness which led to her mother being put into a permanent place at a psychiatric facility. Cahun attended the University Of Paris, Sorbonne. During this time is when he started her self-portrait photography which was as early as 1912 (which means she was 18) and continued to take photographs of herself through the 1930’s.However, Cahun passed on 8th of December 1954

Many of Cahun’s self-portraits show her with her head shaven and only from the shoulders up eliminating her body which blurs the gender indicators. Which shows that her identity and gender is allowed to be seen, however should not be objectified.

WW2 Activism

Cahun settled in Jersey in 1937, after the fall of France and the German occupation of Jersey and the Channel Islands . Where Cahun became an activist and propagandists and worked producing anti-German fliers. In 1944 Cahun was sentenced to death however it was not carried out as the Island was liberated in 1945, however throughout her time in jail Cahun’s health declined and unfortunately never recovered after being let out and Cahun passed on 8th of December 1954.

Cahun Analysis

This is image is taken using a film camera and the genre of this photography is portraiture.

The mise-en-scene presents the self-portrait photo of Claude Cahun sat on a chair, with a t-shirt that says don’t kiss me, I’m in training, with a black background. The tone of this image is pretty dark, dues to the background and her hair and makeup being dark as well. The use of light in this image is quite soft warm looking lighting, however, it is still artificial light so this may have been taken in her home or where ever she used as a studio. The focus distance is short as it is a close up photo and the depth of field is large as everything is in focus. The  leading lines of the images would be the lightness of her white outfit against the dark black background, as well as the black accessories she is wearing also bring your eyes across the image.

I believe the ISO is 100 as everything is in focus and not grainy. I believe that the shutter speed is 1000 as everything is clear.

Claude Cahun states: “The abstraction, the dream, are as limited for me as the concrete and the real” this demonstrates the fact that during the occupation she felt trapped and possibly isolated. As she has big dreams to be creative and free however they were stopped by WW2 and the occupation of Jersey.