CLAUDE CAHUN: DOING PHOTOGRAPHY
Megan Murdie 11314400
rMA Thesis: Art Studies University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Dr. Miriam van Rijsingen
Table of Contents
Page
List of Tables 1
Introduction 2
Chapter
1 (re)Discovering Claude Cahun 8
2 The Archive 18
3 “Doing” Photography 36
Conclusion 52
List of Figures 56
CLAUDE CAHUN
Posed in front of a simple mirror, an unidentified figure tilts her head to gaze straight into the lens of the camera. With short hair and shaved brows, a mannish checked jacket, pouting lips, glowing skin, it is uncertain who or what the person in the photograph is. Standing in a
nondescript room, she seems to exist out of time and space, with no visual cues to help the viewer organize or categorize the image. Gender, sexuality, age, class, race, when, where, who— all is left to the imagination.
It was in my own nondescript bedroom in small town America that, thanks to the world wide web, I first saw what has now become one of artist Claude Cahun’s most iconic images (Figure 1). At the time, I had never seen anyone, male or female, who looked quite like she did. I couldn’t imagine then where that photograph would lead me, but this quest alone speaks to the power of the photographic image—to the extent that I would ultimately find myself four thousand miles from home, on an island off the coast of France, to learn more about its subject and author. This project is the culmination of that journey.
Known today for her androgynous self-portraits, Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) was largely forgotten by history until her rediscovery in the mid-1980’s by French art historian Francois Leperlier. Leperlier came across Cahun’s name by chance in her political Surrealist text titled Paris sont ouverts and years later published the first biography of Cahun, L’Écart et la
metamorphose in 1992.1 Absent from most histories of French Surrealism and often overlooked as one of the few female members of the Surrealist movement, the extent of her contributions to the Parisian art scene during the inter-war period are only just fully coming to light.2 In recent years, Cahun has come to be recognized as one of the first visibly queer artists in the history of art3, and there is no doubt that her life and work provide viewers a revolutionary depiction of the multiple possibilities of gender, the body, and identity.
Cahun’s earlier self-portraits often show the artist with shaved hair and androgynous clothes, creating a persona that was confrontational to contemporary ideas of femininity. In her
1 Francois Leperlier, “L’assomption de Claude Cahun,” in La femme s’entête: La part du féminine dans le
surréalism, ed. Georgiana Colvile and Katharine Conley (Paris: Lachenal et Ritter, 1998), 101-103.
2 The first English language biography of Cahun, Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun, by Jennifer
Shaw was published in 2017.
3 Siobhan McGurk, "Claude Cahun, Symbolism and Surrealism: The Importance of Historical Contextualization,”
lifetime, Cahun created numerous self-portraits that played with the notion of a fixed identity, dressing up as various characters including a weight lifter, androgyne, dandy and doll – all of which address questions of gender and subjectivity (Figures 3-5). Most importantly, her photographs illustrate the power of the photographic medium for constructing/deconstructing identity while simultaneously subverting and displacing binary notions of gender. Through her visual subversion of constructed gender roles, Cahun was able to create images that are now proliferating across time and culture to dismantle preconceived notions of femininity even today.
While it is clear that Cahun’s images are Surrealist fictions—mostly showing herself as characters and in scenes and settings born from her imagination—upon discovering the
photographs, I found it confusing that many of the images were titled “Self-portrait.” Nowhere in any of the artist’s photographs is there a visible shutter release cable or any other typical quality of a self-portrait. With this in mind, naturally some questions about the images arose: What kind of photographic technology did she use? Who, if anyone, helped take the photographs? Are they in fact self-portraits, in the sense that they convey to the viewer the subject responsible for staging the image? How did she process and print film? How did she create such striking photographic images that appear to be, when viewed with 21st Century eyes, so ahead of their time?
As little is written about the technical details of her work, the best way to find answers was to visit the Jersey Heritage Archive. Cahun and her partner moved to Jersey, a channel island off the coast of Normandy, during WWII and died there years later leaving all their work behind,4 therefore the archive houses the largest collection of the artist’s work in the world. During my time in Jersey, I was able to see hundreds of Cahun’s self-portraits and various documents from her archive. After a few days sifting through images and documents, it became clear that there was much more to the picture than, well…pictures. I am more than pleased with my findings and by using a text by James Stevenson titled “Claude Cahun: An Analyses of Her Photographic Technique” (the only published text on the subject) as a guideline to support my
4 After the death of Cahun and her partner, Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), the couple’s estate was left to a
niece in France who ultimately sold the property. During the estate sale, Cahun’s photographs were packed in wooden tea boxes and sold to a local man on the island, John Wakeham, who collected rare books and ephemera. In 1995, after the publication of Leperlier’s biography garnered some notoriety for Cahun, the photographs were bought from Mr. Wakeham by the Jersey Heritage Trust. See Louise Downie, introduction to Don’t Kiss Me: The
observations, I believe I have a strong case upon which I will build my topic of photographic performativity.
SUBJECTIVITY, GENDER, THE PHOTOGRAPH
To further explore questions surrounding the use of photography in constructing and deconstructing identity, with Cahun as my central case study, I will rely on certain theoretical tools dealing with subjectivity and photography. Specifically, I’m interested in the ways in which artists, like Cahun, have used photography performatively to construct new representations of gender, femininity, and the self.
There are several ways subjectivity relates to visual images, especially self-portraits. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would argue that one of the central ways human beings organize the world is through looking, and self-portrait photographs show us a version of the exterior self as it is organized within the world around it. What’s more, the process with which a self-portrait is made can be read as a result of the subjectivity of the author.5 That being said, such an
understanding of both visual images and subjectivity rely on a singular notion of both. What’s more, it also relies on a misunderstanding of the photograph as being the singular outcome of photography. In the traditional self-portrait, the individual is emphasized and objectified and the meaning of photography is reduced to that of a fixed object—a photograph.
This is particularly relevant when reading Cahun’s images which deal with such issues as fixed identity, race, gender, and sexuality. A contemporary of Cahun, Joan Riviere’s theory of feminine masquerade is groundbreaking in that it points to the fact that fixed identity—in this case “woman”—is an illusion, something worn like a mask. Here the masquerade of
womanliness cannot be distinguished from the woman herself,6 which raises questions about gender in general and the nature of subjectivity as fixed. The same problems and questions frame the work of Cahun.
In her book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler expands on the theory of gendered masquerade introduced by Riviere. Instead of questioning which internal feature constitutes
5 Gen Doy, Picturing the Self: Changing Views of the Subject in Visual Culture (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2005),
7.
6 Laurie Monahan, “Radical Transformations: Claude Cahun and the Masquerade of Womanliness.” In Inside the
Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art: In, Of, and from the Feminine, ed. Cathy De Zegher,
“personal identity,” she poses the question: “Which possibilities of doing gender repeat and displace through hyperbole, dissonance, internal confusion, and proliferation the very constructs by which they are mobilized?”7 Or what possible ways of “doing” gender subvert the construct that is gender? What possible ways of “doing” identity subvert identity? Perhaps photography— not the photograph itself but the “doing” of the photograph—answers Butler’s call.
The conception of gender as performative points both to the fractured nature of identity and fictitious nature of the self—theories which are exemplified by Cahun’s photographic process. Butler argues that “the “doer” is variably constructed in and through the deed.”8 It is through “doing” or staging photographs that Cahun constructs the fractured subjectivity that Butler theorizes. By subverting the construction of the singular, Lacanian self-portrait, Cahun subverts the construction of the singular “self.” Thus, it seems most important to investigate the artist’s “doing” of identity within the context the “doing” of a photograph—instead of in the aesthetic of the photographic print alone. I would like to use this notion as a point of departure for investigating the possible meanings to be found in Cahun’s photographic process.
CHAPTER CONTENTS
In the first chapter of my thesis, I will aim to situate my own research within the current scholarship about Cahun’s self-portraits. By tracing the rediscovery of Cahun from her first biographer, Francois Leperlier, to her rising popularity in the 1990s, to her current status as burgeoning Queer Icon, I hope to show that most of the existing approaches to analyzing and understanding Cahun’s work tend to either depend too heavily on her biography or too heavily on queer and gender theories to find meaning in her work. Most scholars fall into the trap of uncovering the “truth” about Cahun and in turn they assume that she must have had very post-modern ideas regarding her own identity. Most importantly for this thesis, the majority of
existing scholarship overlooks the most glaring issue regarding Cahun’s self-portraits in general, which is whether or not they are self-portraits at all.
To begin investigating this issue, my second chapter will deal with my findings at the Jersey Heritage Archive. Using James Stevenson’s essay “Claude Cahun: An Analysis of her Photographic Technique” in combination with my own observations, I will aim to answer some
7 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 2005), 43. 8 Ibid., 195.
of the questions posed in this introduction: What kind of photographic technology did Cahun use? Who, if anyone, helped take the photographs? How did she process and print film? Most importantly: Are they in fact self-portraits, in the sense that they convey to the viewer the subject responsible for staging the image? By outlining my findings, certain photographic images and processes will become more well-defined as my main objects of research.
Through this discussion of the photographs and my discovery of the process by which they were made, I will then be able to discuss the images within the theoretical context of subjectivity. This will form the content of the third and final chapter of the thesis. Shifting focus from the photographic print to the photographic process, I would like to investigate how Cahun’s photographic process informs the content and possible meaning(s) to be found in her images. I would like to view the construction of the images as an analogy for the construction of the self. By focusing on the photographic process as aesthetically valuable, I hope to prove that art history’s concentration on the photograph as the final artwork has obstructed the aesthetic
appreciation of the performative process of photographic art itself, and led to a misunderstanding of the work of artist’s like Cahun.
FRANCOIS LEPERLIER
The rediscovery of Surrealist artist Claude Cahun has posed many questions for art historians and scholars. As a woman, Cahun was essentially erased from histories of Surrealist art and her contributions to the Parisian art scene of the interwar period are still being uncovered. Early scholarship attempting to recover the artist is fraught with inaccuracies—some claiming she died in a Nazi death camp, others completely mistaking her for a man due to her ambiguous pen name.9 Today, she is best known for her androgynous self-portraits and Surrealist texts, all of which seem to question the notion of fixed identity and self-representation.
It wasn’t until a chance encounter between French art historian Francois Leperlier and a text penned by Cahun called Les paris sont ouverts,10 that the artist’s situation as a forgotten member of the Surrealist movement was elevated to that of considerable academic interest. After 20 years of archival research, Leperlier published the first biography of Cahun entitled L’Écart et
la métamorphose in 1992 and shortly after published the first catalogue raisonné of Cahun’s
gender-bending photographs. Since the publication of this early research, it has become clear that Cahun is of the utmost importance to understanding the role of women and homosexuals within the Surrealist movement, and the history of art at large.
Born Lucy Schwob in 1894, Cahun was part of a privileged literary family from Nantes.11 Jewish on her father’s side, her paternal lineage included her uncle, Marcel Schwob, a gay symbolist poet known to socialize with the likes of Oscar Wilde, and her father Maurice Schwob who owned and published Republican newspaper Le Phare de la Loire. After a turbulent
childhood, which included the commitment of her mother to an asylum and subsequently being passed around to multiple family members, and extreme bullying at the hands of her peers before being shipped away to boarding school in England, Cahun met her lifelong partner Suzanne Malherbe (also known as Marcel Moore) in 1909.
The young women became inseparable and, in a strange twist of fate, became stepsisters in 1917 when Cahun’s father married Moore’s mother, which only facilitated their relationship and thickened their bond as creative collaborators and lovers. In 1921, the women moved to
9 Jennifer Blessing, “Claude Cahun, Dandy Provocateuse,” in Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture, ed.
Susan Fillin-Yeh (New York: NYU Press, 2001), 185.
10 Written by Cahun and published in 1934, the text defends Surrealism’s importance and compares poetry to
propaganda, advocating for its use as a political tool.
11 All biographical information: Francois Leperlier, Claude Cahun: L’exotisme interieur (Paris: Fayard, 2006);
Paris and entered into avant-garde circles where they quickly distinguished themselves. Cahun especially so. She was one of the few women to sign the Surrealist manifesto, and was known to parade the city flamboyantly—painting her shaven head pink and unabashedly frequenting the cafes of Paris arm in arm with her female lover. The couple lived in Paris until the late 1930s when growing unrest and anti-Semitism would force them to move to their childhood vacation destination on the Isle of Jersey.
The women lived on the channel island relatively peacefully, parading as “les madames,” two old spinster sisters from France, until the Nazi occupation that lasted until 1945. During this time, they became active in the Nazi resistance on the island by distributing counter propaganda that ultimately led to the desertion of several Nazi soldiers. In 1944, as a result of these efforts, the couple was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to imprisonment and death. The island was liberated before their sentences could be carried out. Nevertheless, much of the artists’ writing and photography was destroyed by the Nazis who considered it degenerate.
Unfortunately, Cahun’s health, which she had struggled with all her life, never fully recovered from her time in prison. In 1954, at the age of 60, she died of a heart attack on the Isle of Jersey. Cahun was cremated and buried next to her home at St. Brelade’s Church Cemetery. She left her entire estate to Malherbe who remained on the island in relative solitude until her death in 1972. Malherbe took her own life at the age of 79 after suffering appendicitis.
After Leperlier’s first biography of Cahun, it became clear that her work could provide art historians a better understanding of the way in which female surrealists navigated a male-dominated and seemingly misogynistic art movement.12 Throughout his research and writing, Leperlier prioritized biographical information as being key to understanding Cahun’s work. Leperlier seems to view Cahun’s primary importance as falling within the history of Surrealism and rarely moves beyond her role in the group—going so far as to call her the only existing female Surrealist photographer. While his biographies serve as the starting point for any research into Cahun’s life and work, they do not question wider society, culture and politics in relation to her life and artistic practice.13
12 Siobhan McGurk, "Claude Cahun, Symbolism and Surrealism: The Importance of Historical
Contextualization," History Compass 10, no. 1 (2012): 48.
FEMINIST CRITIQUE
Feminist art scholars were the first to critique Leperlier’s academic position, and in contrast to his main interest in Cahun’s literary works, they focused on her self-portraits. Shortly after Cahun’s work was introduced to American audiences, art theorist Hal Foster declared Cahun a “Cindy Sherman avant la lettre who deals with her self-portraits in masquerade.”14 Subsequently, scholars developed this assertion and dissected Cahun’s work as a predecessor to that of contemporary artists like Cindy Sherman.15 The common comparison of Cahun to Sherman is based on the understanding of gender as being performative, and the artists’ similar use of their own bodies as the base for gender construction.16
The first solo exhibition of Cahun’s photographs took place in New York at the Gallery Zabriskie in 1992, the same year Leperlier published his biography.17 It would be hard to attribute the rediscovery and increasing popular interest of Cahun’s work in the 1990s on mere coincidence. Around this time, feminist discourse on the performativity of gender and the possibility of dismantling hegemonic gender norms peaked with the publication of Judith Butler’s books Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity in 1990 and Bodies
that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” in 1993. As a result, almost all of the
scholarship18 surrounding Cahun’s work echoes the same theoretical discourse.
Some scholars, like Whitney Chadwick, argue that Cahun’s photos can be seen as a visualization of Butler’s theories of “gender trouble.”19 In her text, “An Infinite Play of Empty Mirrors: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation,” Chadwick aims to reconsider the role of women in Surrealism. She argues that this subject is particularly relevant because “postmodern theories have opened up new spaces for considerations of the feminine” which allows for the opportunity to view the role of women in Surrealism as a larger project dealing with
14 Hal Foster, “L’amour faux,” Art in America 74, no. 1 (January 1986), 118.
15 See Katy Kline, “In or Out of the Picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman,” in Mirror Images: Women,
Surrealism, Self-Representation, ed. Whitney Chadwick (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 66-81; Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman, ed. Shelley Rice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).
16 Jennifer Blessing, “Dandy Provocateuse,” 186.
17 Astrid Peterle, "Visible-Invisible-Hypervisible": Sketching the Reception of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore."
IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences. November 7, 2013. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://www.iwm.at/publications/5-junior-visiting-fellows-conferences/vol-xxii/astrid-peterle-2/.
18 Specifically, Anglophone scholarship.
19 Whitney Chadwick, “An Infinite Play of Empty Mirrors,” in Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and
representation.20 Through exploring the relationship between female identity and the female body, work by female Surrealists differs from that of their male counter parts who were more inclined to project their subconscious desires outward onto bodies other than their own.
Centering on the concept of gender as masquerade, Chadwick suggests that Cahun’s gender fluid images are not simply a product of Surrealism, but of the same lesbian culture that produced Romaine Brooks’ famous Self-Portrait in the 1920s (Figure 6). Cahun’s photographs, like other female-authored works of the time, can be seen as “articulating gender and sexuality as positional rather than fixed.”21 Chadwick goes on to suggest that cross-dressing and similar performative practices have enabled women artists like Cahun to “embody what Judith Butler has called the “three contingent dimensions of significant corporeality: anatomical sex, gender identity, and gender performance.”22 Therefore, Chadwick suggests that Cahun’s multiple
personae are derived from a visual culture of cross-dressing which provided women in the 1920s and 30s a means by which to subvert heteronormative gender categories.
More recently, the analysis of Cahun’s work in poststructuralist terms has reached an extreme with scholars going so far as to suggest that Cahun was in fact transgender. In her article, “The Impudence of Claude Cahun,” Christy Wampole argues that Cahun’s photographs serve as a “prototype of a demand for dignity—as a transgender person, a lesbian, a female artist.”23 Wampole goes on to assert that Cahun dressing “like a man” and writing that her preferred gender was “neuter” in semi-autobiographical text Aveux non avenus, are enough to point to the “possibility” of Cahun’s identity being what we would today consider transgender.24
Much of the scholarship about Cahun echoes these themes, causing the majority of art historians and scholars to see the artist only in relation to her gender and sexuality.25 Her
20 Chadwick, “An Infinite Play of Empty Mirrors,” 4. 21 Ibid., 24.
22 Ibid., 27.
23 Christy Wampole, “The Impudence of Claude Cahun,” L’esprit createur 53, no. 1 (2013): 101. 24 Ibid., 104.
25 See Laurie Monahan, “Radical Transformations: Claude Cahun and the Masquerade of Womanliness,” in Inside
the Visible: Elliptical Traverse of Twentieth Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine, ed. Cathy de Zegher
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1996), 125-135; Jennifer Blessing, “Claude Cahun, Dandy Provocateuse,” in Dandies:
Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture, ed. Susan Fillin-Yeh (New York: NYU Press, 2001), 185-203; Gayle
Zachmann, "Surreal and Canny Selves: Photographic Figures in Claude Cahun," Studies in 20th & 21st Century
Literature 27, no. 2 (2003): 393-423; Carolyne Topdjian, “Shape Shifting Beauty: The Body, Gender, and
Subjectivity in the Photographs of Claude Cahun,” New Feminist Research 32, no. 4 (2007): 63-86; Viviana Gravano, “Explorations, Simulations: Claude Cahun and Self-Identity,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 16, no. 4 (2009): 353-371.
apparent lesbianism set her apart from other Surrealist women who all had romantic relationships with male Surrealists; therefore, Cahun’s (homo)sexuality has come to take precedent as the central lens through which to analyze her work. This inclination is distinct in Carolyn Dean’s 1996 article “Claude Cahun’s Double,” which interprets Cahun’s entire life through her sexuality. Dean emphasizes the need to historically contextualize homosexuality in order to understand how it operates within Cahun’s work, and in so doing, she explores homosexuality as an aesthetic during the 1920s and 30s.
While art historians like Dean contributed to the increasing visibility of Cahun at the turn of the millennium, her partner, Marcel Moore, has only gained recognition in the last few years. Although Francois Leperlier mentioned Moore as Cahun’s lover and sometimes collaborator, more recent feminist analyses reveals that she played a larger role. Julie Cole, for example, posits that Malherbe was not only an equal artistic collaborator to Cahun, but goes so far as to credit her with staging and capturing the numerous portrait photographs.26
CLAUDE CAHUN AND MARCEL MOORE
Since the publication of Leperlier’s initial research, it has been widely accepted among scholars that the (now famous) self-portraits were never published or exhibited during Cahun’s lifetime and that this was her own conscious decision.27 It would seem then that Moore was the only intended audience for Cahun’s photographs. This issue is the main topic of interest for art historian Tirza True Latimer who, like Leperlier, relies heavily on Cahun’s biography in order to prove that the images were the product of collaboration.
While other scholarship alludes to some form of collaboration, Latimer has published extensively on the subject and is the leading proponent of the argument that Cahun and Moore were in fact equal creative collaborators of both the photographic and textual works so far credited to Cahun.28 She goes so far as to claim that the photographs typically described as “self-portraits” aren’t self-portraits at all, but rather the product of collaboration.
26 Julie Cole, “Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, and the Collaborative Construction of a Lesbian Subjectivity,” in
Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism, ed. Norma Broude and Mary DuBose
Garrard (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 359.
27 Peterle, “Visible-Invisible-Hypervisible,” 4.
28 See Tirza True Latimer, “Narcissus and Narcissus: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” in Women
Together/Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 68104;
---, “Entre Nous: Between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12, no. 2 (2006): 197-216; ---, "Claude Cahun's Mirror in the Lens." The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 18, no. 1 (2011):
In her article, “Entre Nous: Between Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” Latimer develops her argument stating that Cahun “imagined, composed, performed, and her partner Marcel Moore envisioned, visualized, imaged” the oeuvre attributed to Cahun.29 To Latimer, it’s obvious that Cahun could not have created the majority of the images alone, even with the help of a timer or cable release. She thus blames the categorization of the photos as “self”-portraits on the fact that it provides “scholars, curators, and other contemporary viewers with what seems a viable term of convenience.”30 Based on the fact that Cahun and Moore were not only artistic partners but lovers, Latimer suggests that the erasure of their collaboration serves hetero-patriarchal social norms and artistic hierarchies. Such constructs have historically marginalized women and homosexuals, and placed inflated importance on individual artists.
She goes on to provide several material examples of evidence from the Jersey Heritage Archive that alludes to the couple’s creative partnership. Latimer writes “When Cahun describes the photographs as “our photography” or “our amateur efforts” in letters to friends, her use of the first-person plural possessive acknowledges Moore’s involvement.”31 She also refers to the photo processing envelopes which often showed the name of Moore as well as Cahun. Several
negatives show images of both women taken in the same settings, which clearly indicates Moore’s involvement in the photographic process.
While Latimer does make a strong argument, she runs the risk of over simplifying and romanticizing the artists’ collaboration, relying on what Claudine Mitchell refers to as the “trivializing elision between art and biography which so frequently operates in accounts of women’s art.”32 Here, female artists’ sexuality often usurps their intellectuality in regards to the way critics and scholars analyze and historicize their work. This is certainly the case with Latimer’s interpretation of Cahun, which places Cahun and Moore’s romantic partnership at the center of their lives and artistic practice.
19-22; ---, “Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: Casualties of a Backfiring Canon?” in Re-envisioning the
Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World, ed. Ruth Iskin (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011),
45-58.
29 Latimer, “Entre Nous,” 198. 30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 199.
32 Claudine Mitchell, "Intellectuality and Sexuality: Camille Claudel, the Fin de Siècle Sculptress," Art History 12,
Latimer depends heavily on lesbian clichés quoting excerpts from Cahun’s book Aveux
non avenus like “I am one. You are the other. Or the contrary.”33 Here, she implies that Cahun and Moore’s connection was so deep that they were no longer individuals but rather the “identification between them [was] a revolving door.”34 Latimer continues referencing a set of portraits of Cahun and Moore in front of a mirror (Figures 2-3), playing up the obvious link between romantic partners as mirror images of one another.
What’s more, the notion of lesbian relationships as being “narcissistic,” as purported by Latimer, relies on a universalizing of the female and lesbian experience. Because Moore and Cahun were lovers and creative collaborators, does not erase their individual experiences and identities. For example, the fact that Cahun was half Jewish influenced the trajectory of her entire life—especially considering the time in which she lived—and this was not Moore’s experience. Conversely, unlike Cahun, Malherbe was not born into an affluent and well-known family. That’s not to say the women weren’t creative equals, however, it is important to point out the various intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality at play in each of their unique lived experiences. Latimer seems to explain all aspects of Cahun’s life and art as being the result of her lesbianism, which is not only reductive, but highly debatable seeing as Cahun never referred to herself in these terms.
In another of her texts, “Claude Cahun’s Mirror in the Lens,” Latimer builds on her argument that the images are not “self-portraits” but simply “portraits” created by Cahun and Moore, and in doing so she alludes to a new and interesting path of inquiry. She suggests that portraiture as it was practiced by Cahun and Moore can be seen as a theatrical pursuit, one that defied traditional functions of portrait photography as commemorating or classifying a subject. Instead, for Cahun and Moore photography served “to destabilize the notion of the “self” that the portrait genre has historically upheld—and, more constructively, to provide an arena of
experimentation within which the photographer and the subject could improvise alternative scenarios of social, sexual, and artistic practice.”35 The text goes on to trace the women’s involvement in various theater troupes in Paris in order to validate this claim.
33 Cahun quoted in Latimer, “Entre Nous,” 199. 34 Ibid.
Latimer seems to be suggesting that the portrait photographs provided a space for Cahun and Moore to perform various identities in—which can be seen in many examples from Cahun’s archive. However, her text falls short in its development of this issue as she again focuses largely on biography instead of on the work itself—namely she emphases the romantic partnership between Cahun and Moore as the central aspect of the artists’ lives that gives meaning to their work. Latimer’s dependence almost solely on biographical facts hinders her analysis from really gaining any new insight into the artworks and artists.
CONCLUSION
While the various approaches by biographers, feminist scholars, and art historians have certain distinctions, they share more in common than they’d probably like to admit. Most of the approaches to analyzing and understanding Cahun’s work prioritize biographical information as being key to understanding her photographs and writing. What’s more, they seem to be ignoring the main issue of her so-called self-portraits—that being, are they even self-portraits? Scholars tend to play into their own romantic views of Cahun as a feminist pioneer and queer icon by relying on the misconception of Cahun’s images as traditional self-portraits—what Latimer calls a “term of convenience”—for their analyses. In doing so, much of the literature on Cahun tends to ignore reality in its quest for the “truth” of who or what Cahun was.
In recent years, Cahun’s work has crossed disciplinary borders and now literature scholars, historians, and theater studies scholars are offering their interpretations. Gayle Zachmann’s article “The Photographic Intertext: Invisible Adventures in the Work of Claude Cahun” provides more insight into the artist’s written works—which were the only works published by Cahun during her lifetime. Miranda Welby-Everard recently published the first in depth article that focuses on Cahun and Moore’s theater productions of the inter-war period and argues that the photographs were made in the context of Cahun’s theater roles.36
Another text that presents a new perspective on old arguments is a chapter hidden away in Louise Downie’s catalogue Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore by James Stevenson. “Claude Cahun: An Analysis of Her Photographic Technique,” provides new insight into the photographic technology that would have been available to Cahun. By outlining Cahun’s technical abilities, Stevenson is able to make new assertions about her artistic intent. He
makes a strong case for Moore’s involvement in the process of photographing Cahun but, unlike Latimer, Stevenson prefers the idea that she acted as a photo assistant. Stevenson’s discussion of Cahun’s photographs within the context of photographic history makes the text amongst the most convincing on the nature of Cahun and Moore’s creative partnership, and provides a starting point for further investigation.
When researching Claude Cahun, it is nearly impossible to find any written materials about her photographic process. This is surprising given that her notoriety stems from her
reputation as a photographer. Even simple, straightforward questions like—What kind of camera did she use? What kind of film? Did she use a timer? A tripod? Did she process and print film herself? How did she create such striking photographic images that appear to be so ahead of their time? —seem impossible to answer when wading through the majority of current scholarship on Cahun. Art historians and other scholars seem so preoccupied with Cahun’s biography that they forget to ask these technical questions. They, overwhelmingly, ignore or gloss over a glaring issue concerning her photographs. That is: Are Claude Cahun’s photographs of herself self-portraits at all?
Perhaps a definition of the “self-portrait” is necessary to answer this question. In portrait photographs of all kinds, a subject is documented and shown to the viewer. In the self-portrait photograph, the subject revealed in the image is the photographer herself. Historically, this practice is usually evident through a visible shutter cable, mirrors, or use of timer; however, Cahun’s “self-portraits” are lacking in almost all of these qualities. Understanding how Cahun’s photographs were made is key to understanding whether or not they are indeed self-portraits. Therefore, it is essential to take a closer look at Cahun’s photographic technique.
To date, the first and only text dealing with Cahun’s photographic technique is tucked away in Louise Downey’s catalogue Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel
Moore published in 2006.37 James Stevenson, who is the photographic director at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, begins to answer these, so far, unanswered questions in his chapter titled “Claude Cahun: An Analysis of her Photographic Technique.” Stevenson provides a thorough investigation of the works housed in the Jersey Heritage Archive and the chapter reports his findings. This text will form the basis of my investigation; therefore, I will summarize his findings throughout this chapter.
Stevenson’s text provides an in-depth analysis of the technical aspects and photographic processes employed by Cahun and certainly changes the way we might view the artist’s work. In doing so, he is able to provide new insights into Cahun’s intentions as a photographer and Marcel Moore’s role in this process. His discussion of Cahun’s camera, the way she used light,
37 It should be noted that Stevenson’s text is based solely on primary archival research and contains no footnotes or
and her dependence on photo labs not only explain her technical process, but also point to certain aesthetic elements which can be seen throughout the oeuvre.
I would like to argue that these visual elements can serve as a signature in Cahun’s work and provide clues to better understanding the intention behind the photographs. Using
Stevenson’s findings as a starting point, I would like to combine my own findings at the Jersey Heritage Archive for a more thorough, formal analysis of the images. In doing so, I hope to point to the seemingly consistent aesthetic/artistic intention which is visible not only in the self-portrait photographs, but in Cahun’s photographic oeuvre as a whole. Through this investigation, I think it becomes clear that while the photographs may not be “self-portraits” in the traditional sense, they are very clearly images of the self in that they show the viewer the subject responsible for staging the photographs.
EVIDENCE
Stevenson opens his text by discussing what evidence is available for investigation. Since much of Cahun’s, as well as Moore’s, art was lost or destroyed during WWII, it is difficult to form a conclusive analysis of Cahun’s photographic technique because the remaining evidence of her work is incomplete. However, he goes on to state that “some conclusions can be reached by close inspection of her existing photographs, particularly by a study of the original
negatives.”38 Stevenson emphasizes the importance of the photographic negative as the genesis of a photographer’s creative process. The negative is the place where the vision of the
photographer is made through the use of the camera, film, lens and lighting.39
The negative is particularly important to Cahun’s work because her remaining oeuvre is lacking in original photographic prints, which are traditionally considered the finished product of photographic artworks. Most photographers make prints with the intention that they will be displayed as the final artwork, but for Cahun, “the evidence suggests that she did not work in this way and there are no records of her holding a photographic exhibition in her lifetime.”40 Instead, the existing work suggests an attitude toward photography more akin to the recording of
performance and it is clear that Cahun was not a professional photographer.
38 James Stevenson, “Claude Cahun: An Analysis of Her Photographic Technique,” in Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, ed. Louise Downie (London: Aperture/Jersey Heritage Trust, 2006), 46.
39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.
Stevenson notes that of the 504 photographs within the Jersey Heritage Archive, 123 negatives and 316 prints can be attributed to Cahun. 232 of these photographs can be “considered to have been made as artworks rather than general snapshot or family pictures.”41 64 photographs are by unknown authors or have been attributed to Marcel Moore. These negatives and prints attributed to Moore are equally important to those of Cahun as they reveal clues about the latter’s artistic intent and photographic process.
CAMERA
As the painter relies on the brush, so the photographer relies on the camera.
Consequently, the first question I had upon discovering Cahun’s photographs was “What kind of camera did she use?” Stevenson answers this question by looking closely at the film negatives. He writes “Within the archive, by far the majority of the existing negative formats are 35mm, 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ inches and 2 ½ x 3 ½ inches. Most are the 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ size.”42 These negatives are now stored individually but were cut from a single roll, which would have included eight separate exposures. This can be seen in the fact that several negatives from a single photo session match perfectly together, like a series of portraits of Georges Schwob for example (Figure 7). The scissor cuts on the top and bottom of the negatives match exactly and reveal that they were once a single roll of film.43
The 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ size film was referred to in Kodak’s product catalogue as type 118 film and is listed as being sold between 1900 and 1961. Stevenson notes that “This type of film was used in a folding camera where the lens panel is released from the body of the camera and was connected by leather bellows to the camera frame. These types of camera, regardless of their size, were referred to as ‘folding pocket cameras.’”44 With these cameras, focusing images was done by looking through a small viewfinder located above the lens. The lens would have controls for adjusting lens aperture and shutter speed. Kodak marketed the Type 3 Folding Pocket
Camera between 1900 and 1915 and it is almost undeniable that Cahun would have used a camera such as this (Figure 8).
41 Stevenson, “Analysis of Her Photographic Technique,” 47. 42 Ibid.
43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.
Stevenson’s observation is supported by a 1914 Kodak catalogue which lists the “No. 3 Folding Pocket Kodak” as making “3¼ × 4¼ pictures—a favorite with many, and especially suitable for lantern slide making, as the slide can be printed by direct contact.”45 Something rather remarkable that Stevenson points out is that Cahun appears to have used the same camera from 1915 until the late 1940s. In other words, she only used this single camera for most of her working life. Stevenson concludes this by again analyzing the film. He writes:
The area of the camera back where the film is locked during the photograph’s exposure makes a shape that describes the rebate of the negative. This produces a sharp edge to the negative border and has a characteristic shape for each camera. It seems to be absolutely consistent throughout the whole period covered by Cahun’s archive.46
This signature left by the camera on the negative border provides overwhelming evidence that she used this camera for the majority of her working life as it can be seen on almost all
remaining negatives.
Stevenson points out another characteristic of this camera which lends credence to it being the same one Cahun used. Specifically, there is a level of un-sharp focus that appears at the bottom of several picture frames. What causes this fuzziness? The Type 3 Kodak camera has a rising lens which would be used when the photographer wanted to raise the lens to photograph something that was outside the camera’s field of view if it was level. Stevenson writes that with early camera lenses, “the edge performance of the lens is poorer than at the center of the optical path.”47
Again, the Kodak catalogue verifies Stevenson’s observation in its advertisement of the camera. According to Kodak, “The cameras are equipped with rising and sliding front—a great convenience in architectural and many forms of landscape photography, and an automatic focusing lock is provided so that either can quickly be brought to focus at any-distance.”48 The blurred edge resulting from this feature can be seen quite consistently in many of Cahun’s images, including the self-portraits. This quality, in addition to the signature of the negative border, suggest that she only used this single camera.
45 Canadian Kodak Company. Kodaks and Kodak Supplies 1914. Project Gutenberg. July 16, 2010. Accessed May
25, 2019. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33183/33183-h/33183-h.htm
46 Stevenson, “Analysis of Her Photographic Technique,” 48. 47 Ibid.
LIGHTING
Second to a camera, a photographer’s manipulation of light is often a defining feature of her work. After viewing a substantial number of Cahun’s photographs, it is obvious that most of her images are lit by daylight only. This speaks to the amateur nature of her photographic process and is a clear characteristic of her photographic work. Stevenson notes that “out of the 439 negatives and prints by Cahun studied in the Jersey Heritage Trust Collection, 412 are lit by daylight and only 23 by artificial light.”49 Many of her pictures are taken outside when the weather is good, and therefore, the exposure easy to calculate. A few photographs taken with Cahun posing in the snow illustrate the difficulty she had in calculating exposure in bad conditions (Figure 9). All of the pictures are under exposed, which is common in this type of lighting situation.
There are a few examples of photographs where she uses artificial lighting to illuminate her subjects, often subjects other than herself. One series of portraits of Andre Breton and his wife, Jaqueline, show this use of a single light to create a theatrical effect (Figure 10). Stevenson points out that Cahun’s use of artificial light is “never used in a sophisticated way to imitate daylight effects, but it is used theatrically to create dramatic lighting more usually seen in films or the theater.”50 This effect often illuminates the subject from below the face, creating a sinister appearance.
While the majority of Cahun’s photographs are taken outdoors, her most famous images come from her time in Paris during the 1920s and 30s. Many of these photographs were taken in Cahun’s apartment with the artist posing herself in the pictures. Stevenson argues that Cahun’s Paris apartment might be responsible for the appearance of these images. He purports that “Apartments in Paris tend to have high ceilings and large French windows. Many are on floors above the ground floor. Consequently, these apartments tend to be well lit by natural light. The windows let in a lot of light and are very good for portrait photography.”51 The simple lighting from large windows and the reflection of light from surrounding walls seems to be a method that she frequently used to make her images.
49 Stevenson, “Analysis of Her Photographic Technique,” 48. 50 Ibid., 49.
With so many images taken in daylight, it would be easy to conclude that Cahun had little knowledge of exposure measurement and most likely followed manufacturers’ guidelines
included on film packaging. To Stevenson, there is no evidence to suggest Cahun used an
exposure meter, even though one would have been available to her at the time. Instead, it appears she used a simple technique known as “bracketing exposures” which involves shooting several photographs of the same image with different exposures and saving only the ones which had the right level of exposure. Stevenson concludes that Cahun used simple lighting situations with general guidance from manufacturers’ packaging or guidebooks, and that she combined this with bracketing to get the best possible negatives.
SETTING
After natural lighting, one of the most consistent formal elements in Cahun’s photographs is her choice of setting and manipulation of backdrop. As Stevenson points out when discussing her almost exclusive use of natural light, the majority of Cahun’s images are taken outdoors in good weather. Not only is she consistent in this technical choice, she also consistently chooses certain settings and landscapes as a result. In her abundant outdoor shots, certain
landscapes/backdrops appear repeatedly. From my findings at the archive, I was able to organize Cahun’s settings into four main categories: a. caves and rocks; b. gardens and foliage; c. St. Brelade’s Church Cemetery; and d. thresholds (doorways and windows).
What I found most notable is Cahun’s use of doors, windows, and caves to frame her images. This compositional element speaks not only to her artistic inclinations in composing an image, but to her eye as a photographer. Shooting in doorways and windows would be essential when relying on natural light as they are the places where it is most abundant. They also provide an important compositional element—the frame of the subject. In two photos, one from 1935 and the other 1939, Cahun poses in the garden door of her house in St. Brelade’s Bay in Jersey (Figures 11-12). Both images are compositionally similar with Cahun framed by the overstated stone arch of the doorway. Cahun would make use of the same door in many other images. She uses caves to similarly compose and frame her photographs, as can be seen in another 1939 image (Figure 13). Here, Cahun stands at the mouth of a cave, surrounded on all sides.
Even in the images taken indoors, there are obvious creative choices being made about the appearance of the backdrop and overall composition of the photographs. Most of Cahun’s
indoor images were taken in her Paris apartment where she almost always poses herself in front of a curtain or blanket of some kind—giving the images a more theatrical appearance. The mise-en-scène of these images might be inspired by Cahun’s work in the theatre Le Plateau, especially considering third-party images of her in the play Bluebeard abound (Figure 14).52 These pictures show Cahun in costume as Elle, Bluebeard’s wife, within a stage set or simply in front of the curtain. Based on the lighting techniques employed in these photographs, it appears they could actually be the product of a professional photo session.
This theatrical element can be seen in some of her best-known self-portraits. In an early portrait from 1920, Cahun poses in front of a piece of black fabric that has clearly been tacked onto the wall (Figure 5). Another image from 1928 shows Cahun wearing only a mask as she sits in front of a draped blanket (Figure 15). In another well-known picture from the same period, Cahun stands in front of a patterned blanket or curtain as she hides her face with a mask and wears a cape covered in masquerade masks (Figure 16). By posing herself in front of fabrics and curtains, Cahun not only creates a dramatic mise-en-scène, she again frames herself within the composition.
The repetition of these visual elements can be seen throughout the oeuvre and appear to be the result of a consistent artistic choice. It is compositional elements such as these which have no doubt led to the acknowledgement of the images as historically important works of art since their rediscovery. While she may have relied on amateurish techniques like bracketing, the staging of Cahun’s photographs show that she had a keen ability for composing the types of images she wanted to create.
COSTUMING
In her photographs, Cahun constructs a variety of characters, from a Swiss Miss doll to a gothic Dracula to an Oscar Wilde-inspired dandy. To do so, she relies heavily on make-up, masks, and various costumes. Jennifer Blessing writes that Cahun’s personae are so “exceedingly artificial and exaggerated” that the portraits raise “the doubt that the artist is beneath the clothes
52 Mary Ann Caws, “Claude Cahun: Island of Courage,” in Glorious Eccentrics (New York, NY: Palgrave
at all.”53 However, taking a closer look at Cahun’s images reveals that she was very much “beneath the clothes” and it appears she was likewise very much aware of her appearance.
Much has been written about Cahun’s outfits, even by Cahun herself in her
autobiographical writings.54 Stevenson briefly mentions Cahun’s apparent artistic control over her photo sessions in reference to a set of two images from 1920 which show Cahun wrapped in a corduroy jacket seated on the floor (Figures 17-18). The images are nearly identical aside from the fact that she clearly shaved her head between taking the two photographs. It should also be noted that the first picture, where Cahun visibly has hair, is a negative, and the image of a bald Cahun is a print which appears to have been cropped—suggesting it is the final artwork.
In the picture, Cahun is seated in profile on the floor. She appears to be in front of an out-of-frame window which lights the scene from the right, illuminating her face. While it is clear that much attention was paid to the staging and styling of the photo, another point of interest regarding this image is that it appears to be copying a portrait photograph of Cahun’s father, Maurice Schwob (Figure 19).55 While the precise dates of the photographs are unknown, Laura Bailey and Lizzie Thynne suggest that the images illustrate a “major trope of Cahun’s work,” that being “Who is doubling whom?”56 We may never know the answer to this question, but this set of portraits serve to further suggest that Cahun had a specific idea of how she wanted to be seen.
I observed the same phenomenon in another set of three images from 1928 (Figures 20-22). These pictures are unique as they show Cahun photographed from an aerial perspective while she poses on the ground below. In the images, Cahun is seen in various abstract poses as she lays on a white sheet, contorting her body like a dancer. In two of the pictures, she wears a swimming cap and a two-piece white and black swim suit; however, in the third photo, she changes her wardrobe between photographs to a one-piece swimsuit with block colors. This combined with Cahun’s exaggerated poses, the sheet used as a backdrop, the unique perspective of the camera, all suggest a certain artistic intention behind the composition.
53 Jennifer Blessing, “Claude Cahun, Dandy Provocateuse,” in Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture, ed.
Susan Fillin-Yeh (New York: NYU Press, 2001), 186.
54For example, in a diary entry Cahun describes in detail the outfit she wore the day she was arrested by the Gestapo
in Jersey; see Gen Doy, Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography (London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2007), 85.
55 This connection is made by Laura ‘Lou’ Bailey and Lizzie Thynne in their article “Beyond Representation:
Claude Cahun’s Monstrous Mischief-Making.” History of Photography 29, no. 2 (2005): 136.
In a final example from the archive, Cahun changes both her hair, wardrobe, and props between the taking of three photographs from 1947 (Figures 23-25). The pictures show Cahun at the cemetery near her home in Jersey. Standing in front of bushes that obscure the gravestones of German soldiers, she wears a military style jacket and trousers with tall boots and the images are nearly the same aside from certain details. In the first, Cahun appears neatly dressed with her jacket buttoned to the neck and her hair pulled cleanly off her face. In her mouth she holds a cigarette and in her left hand she poses with a small skull, much like a dandy-fied Hamlet. The next photo is identical aside from the fact that she now hides her face behind a mask. In the third picture, the mask is gone and her appearance is more disheveled, her hair appears to be undone as her jacket now hangs open. She still holds the cigarette, now in her right hand and the small skull sits on the ground nearby. Between her feet is perched her beloved cat, Nike.
Various messages can be taken from these images regarding the war, death, Cahun returning to her home after imprisonment, etc. However, here the emphasis falls on what she is wearing. Gen Doy observes, when discussing this set of Cahun portraits, that she didn’t only costume herself as a performer of womanliness, rather she acted as “an agent of more
multidimensional engagements with gender, society, and politics.”57 In this case, her costume and appearance have many connotations: Occupation resistor, lesbian, Safari hunter, worker.
Examples like these abound in Cahun’s self-portrait photographs and can be considered a consistent quality of her work. This artistic strategy is one of performance, where Cahun changes her appearance, sometimes minutely, in an effort to don multiple personae and perhaps tell a story. What’s more, these instances of small tweaks in appearance during certain photo sessions lead to the conclusion that Cahun, as the actor in the in the photograph, had control over her appearance and had a particular idea of how she wanted to appear in the image.
STILL LIFES AND OBJECTS
Cahun is best known for her self-portraits, apparent in the abundance of scholarship concerning them. Her still life photographs, however, are rarely discussed in depth. This seems like a huge oversight when trying to better understand the artist’s life and work, especially
considering they were her only published and exhibited photographs.58 Like her self-portrait photographs, certain visual and compositional elements can be seen throughout the collection of still life images—including the same objects, settings, and back drops used in the self-portraits. As is characteristic to the majority of her work, almost all of Cahun’s still lifes are shot either outdoors in natural light, or inside using the light from a window. Similarly, in the outdoor still lifes, the same landscapes form the majority of her backdrops. Again, in composing her indoor still lifes, she uses the same fabric backdrops that can be seen in her self-portraits. In a 1935 still life, Cahun arranges certain objects around what looks like a rocky cave where her dress hangs ghostlike in the center of the scene (Figure 26). In a later image from 1939, Cahun poses a whimsical vase in the shape of a woman’s head on a table in the doorway of her house at St. Brelade’s bay (Figure 27). Again, she uses the frame of the door to frame her subject.
In many cases, Cahun’s still lifes and self-portraits seem to be in conversation with one another. This is certainly the case with the vase. In one image, Cahun seems to have propped the vase on a stool and dressed it in a black cape, making it appear as the head of a mannequin (Figure 28). Cahun stands next to the assemblage wearing a similar cape, donning the same expression that is painted on the vase while the flowers in the vase mirror the style of hair on Cahun’s head. The two stand in the doorway side by side, they appear as twins creating a double portrait, a still-life-self-portrait hybrid.
Not all of Cahun’s still lifes are so directly connected to the self-portrait images;
however, they do often share certain objects. For example, a series of still lifes from 1936 show a collection of various assemblages placed inside a bell jar (Figure 29). In an earlier series of self-portraits titled Keepsake, Cahun poses with her head inside a bell jar (Figure 30). Whether or not it is in fact the same bell jar is irrelevant in this case, what is more significant here is the
repetition of a visual element that can be seen throughout the body of work. Gen Doy notes that as Cahun became more politically active in the 1930s, her work seems to take a turn from self-representation towards the world of material objects.59 Whereas in the 1920’s the bell jar contained Cahun’s head, the later bell jar series is more concerned with objects and nature.
58 Published as illustrations in Lise Desharme’s book of nursery rhymes titled Le Coeur de pic and exhibited in 1936
at the “Exhibition of Surrealist Objects” in Paris; see Doy, A Sensual Politics of Photography, 120-123.
Another object that can be seen throughout Cahun’s photographs is a small skull figurine. It is featured prominently in one still life that shows the skull positioned in a bed of flowers, with the shadow of the photographer visible in the lower left corner (Figure 31). The image seems to reference traditional painted still lifes which often depict flowers accompanied by a “memento mori”—in this case, the small skull figurine. Cahun can be seen holding this small skull in several self-portrait photographs. This appears to be the same skull Cahun holds in a later photo set from 1947 which was discussed earlier in this chapter (Figures 23 and 25). Perhaps the skull serves the same function in Cahun’s self-portraits as in her still lifes, as a small reminder of the ephemeral nature of life.
One specific type of object that plays heavily across Cahun’s entire oeuvre is that of the mask. This visual element is one that she has become famous for and it is seen as a key feature of her work. The masks in Cahun’s photographs have certainly piqued the interest of feminist scholars as they can be interpreted as a literal visual representation of the “masquerade” of femininity (and gender at large).60 These types of masks are central to her well-known self-portraits from her time in Paris (Figures 15 and 16). It should come as no surprise then that masks can be seen throughout Cahun’s still lifes. One of her better known still lifes titled Entre
Nous, shows two masquerade masks displayed in the sand of a Jersey beach (Figure 32). The
masks sit on mounds of sand and are accompanied by various objects like a comb and a box of matches. Another less noticeable example comes from a 1936 still life from Le Coeur de pic, in which a tiny bust wearing a masquerade mask sits at the center of an assemblage of feathers and other material (Figure 33).
This recurrence of visual elements is a defining characteristic of Cahun’s oeuvre, the same objects reappear again and again throughout her portraits and still lifes. The repetition of certain objects and imagery throughout Cahun’s oeuvre suggest a definite artistic intention behind the staging of the photographs.
60 See Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10, no. 8 (1929):
DEVELOPING AND PRINTING
The final step in creating a photograph, and widely considered the most important, is printing. This is also the stage in the photographic process which Cahun was not involved in. The final photographic print is traditionally considered the final artwork. In the collection at the Jersey Heritage Archive, there are dozens of negative and print envelopes from photographic processing laboratories in Paris and Jersey. I was even surprised to find envelopes from well-known British retailer Boots. While many photographers would develop and process their own film, the large number of laboratory envelopes suggests that Cahun never did. Therefore, it seems likely that she would have used photo labs to perform all the work required following the staging and photographing of an image.
Stevenson notes that all the choices of “processing chemistry, development time, printing paper and perhaps sometimes even the size of the print enlargement” was left to the discretion of the photographic technician.61 Cahun’s relationship with the photo lab can further be seen in the instructions she often wrote on negative envelopes. Stevenson references the envelope marked “Jersey summer 1938,” which has the instructions “please print as well as poss” and “please reprint N/C darker”62 (Figure 34).
A similar process can be seen in Cahun’s printing as with the development of her film. Stevenson points out that of the 316 prints thought to be authored by Cahun, 242 are contact prints. These prints are used by photographers to edit and decide if or how the photograph should be printed. Contact prints are used solely as reference material and, like negatives, are rarely considered the final artwork. Stevenson refers to these prints stating:
It is likely that Cahun was a ruthless editor of her work, because all the large-format roll film negatives are cut into single images, suggesting that the
unsatisfactory shots were disposed of after editing. Cahun then had contact prints made of her selection, which in the main are what remain today.63
It appears that the processing labs she regularly used made these contact prints and that they were intended to be used as reference material for later final prints. Either she never got around to making those or they were lost or destroyed. It is highly possible that the Nazis destroyed much of her work when she was captured in 1944, which could explain the lack of final
61 Doy, A Sensual Politics of Photography, 51. 62 Assuming “N/C” here means “negative contact”.
photographic prints. That being said, I found only a few images in the archive that have crop marks drawn on them. Those that do are mostly images of subjects other than Cahun (Figures 43 and 44), leading me to doubt whether her self-portraits were created with the intention to be printed at all.
After flipping through the Kodak catalogue from 1914, it is clear that Cahun could have obtained any number of photographic paraphernalia marketed toward “the amateur
photographer.” From tripods to the “How to Make Good Pictures” guidebook to “The
Kodiopticon” projector—Kodak really thought of everything an amateur photographer might need. Specifically, the catalogue advertises the “Kodak Film Tank” noting “Development, that former bugbear of the amateur photographer and especially of the beginner, is made a simple proposition by the Kodak Film Tank—fully as simple as any part of the photographic process.”64 The advertisement continues by asserting that the Kodak Film Tank develops photos as well as even the most expert photographer.
The catalogue also features advertisement for entire developing and printing outfits— making use of a processing lab seemingly unnecessary. Assuming that Cahun would have had access to catalogues such as these, considering the amount of time she frequented photographic shops and labs, it seems curious that she never attempted developing and printing her own images. Combined with the fact that Cahun used the same outdated camera for over 35 years, one has to wonder if she had much interest in the technical aspects of photography at all?
To me, this key feature of Cahun’s oeuvre is of the utmost importance. Considering the final photographic print is widely considered the end product of photography, Cahun’s lack of involvement in printing her photographs and the lack of final prints in general raises many questions. With this in mind and based on Stevenson’s and my own findings at the archive, it is clear that Cahun was by no means a professional photographer—if she considered herself a photographer at all. Her involvement and knowledge of the photographic process beyond staging and snapping a picture was limited and despite the continual development of cameras and
photographic equipment over her lifetime, she apparently wasn’t interested in upgrading.
AUTHORSHIP
We have already established that the camera Cahun used for the majority of her career did not have the built-in capacity to take delayed action photographs, which would have allowed her to operate the shutter before moving into the frame. Stevenson points out that external timers would have been available at this time which could be attached to the shutter, but there is no way to know whether or not Cahun had a device of this type.65 Furthermore, there are several photos that show Cahun at a large distance from the camera, and it is hard to imagine that she could have time to operate a timer and then get in front of the camera (Figure 35). Other images show her behind a closed window, which also make the theory of a delayed-action timer implausible. In addition to the improbable use of a timer, there is no evidence in any of her photographs that Cahun used a long cable release to operate the shutter. When photographers use these, they are almost always visible in the images, and none of her pictures show any evidence of this.
In a series of contact prints of three images (Figure 36), someone’s finger covers the lens and obscures the resultant photos. Stevenson argues that this indicates there was someone else, “perhaps with little photographic experience, operating the camera shutter on this occasion.”66 There are also several photographs in which the shadow of the camera operator can be seen in the image, which Tirza True Latimer argues belongs Cahun’s collaborator.67 The most likely suggestion is that this was Marcel Moore.
Stevenson goes on to suggest that instead of simply attributing the images to Moore because she was technically the one operating the shutter, it is in fact more likely that Moore would have acted as Cahun’s “photo assistant.” I agree that simply attributing the images to the person operating the camera seems short sighted. However, I’m less concerned with identifying a single author or “assistant” and more interested in investigating the true nature of Cahun and Moore’s collaboration. Seeing as neither of the artists were involved in the photographic process beyond the snapping of the image, it seems more relevant to identify the subject who staged the photographs with artistic intention and agree that the resultant photographs are a product of that intention. In this case, the evidence presented thus far suggests that person is Cahun.
65 Stevenson, “Analysis of Her Photographic Technique,” 53. 66 Ibid.
67 Tirza True Latimer, "Claude Cahun's Mirror in the Lens," The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 18, no. 1
