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Claude Cahun
While visiting the Fotomuseum today, some self-portraits of Claude Cahun struck me.
I thought it was a transgender / drag-queen. (meaning a male dressing up as a female)
But after googling it, it appears she is really a she, rather dressing up as a guy, playing with gender.
When reading the story in Wikipedia, I was stunned.
Claude was a genius.
Especially the part in WWII.
Check it out!
Claude Cahun (25 October 1894 – 8 December 1954) was a French photographer and writer. Her work was both political and personal, and often played with the concepts of gender and sexuality.
Technorati Tags: art, claude cahun, gay, photography, queer
Born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, she was the niece of writer Marcel Schwob. Her mother's mental problems meant that she was brought up by her maternal grandmother, Mathilde Cahun. Around 1919, she settled on the pseudonym Claude Cahun, intentionally selecting a sexually ambiguous name, after having previously used the names Claude Courlis and Daniel Douglas.
During the early twenties, she settled in Paris with her life-long partner and step-sister Suzanne Malherbe. For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Malherbe (who adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore) collaborated on various written works, sculptures, and collages. She published articles and novels, notably in the periodical "Mercure de France", and befriended Henri Michaux, Pierre Morhange and Robert Desnos.
In 1937 Cahun and Malherbe settled in Jersey. Following the outbreak of World War 2 and the German invasion, they became active as resistance fighters and propagandists. Fervently against war, the two worked extensively in producing anti-German fliers. Many were snippets from English-to-German translations of BBC reports on the Nazi's crimes and insolence, which were pasted together to create rhythmic poems and harsh criticism. The couple then dressed up and attended many German military events in Jersey, strategically placing them in soldier's pockets, on their chairs, etc. Also, fliers were inconspicuously crumpled up and thrown into cars and windows. In many ways, Cahun and Malherbe's resistance efforts were not only political but artistic actions, using their creative talents to manipulate and undermine the authority which they dispised. In many ways, Cahun's life's work was focused on undermining a certain authority, however her specific resistance fighting targeted a physically dangerous threat. In 1944 they were arrested and sentenced to death, but the sentences were never carried out. However, Cahun's health never recovered from her treatment in jail, and she died in 1954.
In many ways, Cahun's life was marked by a sense of role reversal, and her public identity became a commentary upon not only her own, but the public's notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. Her adoption of a pseudonym, and her androgynous self-portraits display a revolutionay way of thinking and creating, experimenting with her audience's understanding of photography as a documentation of reality. Her poetry challenged gender roles and attacked the increasingly modern world's social and economic boundaries. Also Cahun's participation in the Parisian Surrealist movement diversified the group's artwork and ushered in new representations. Where most Surrealist artists were men, and their primary images were of women as isolated symbols of eroticism, Cahun epitomized the chameleonic and multiple possibilities of the female identity. Her photographs, writings, and general life as an artistic and political revolutionary continue to influence countless artists, namely Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.
Posted on November 23, 2006
in Limit of my knowledge, Linking context
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