Claude Cahun (1894–1954)

Claude Cahun was born Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob to a prominent Jewish family in Nantes, France. Due to her mother's mental illness, she was largely brought up by her grandmother. She attended Parsons Mead School in England after experiencing anti-Semitism at high school in Nantes. She later attended the Sorbonne and began making photographic self-portraits at about age 18. Around 1914, she changed her name to Claude Cahun, after having previously used other names. She's considered a groundbreaking artist who fully embraced gender neutrality long before the term came into use. During the early 1920s, she settled in Paris with her lifelong partner Marcel Moore (pseudonym of Suzanne Malherbe), and entered the milieu of the Surrealist art scene. Cahun and Moore collaborated on various written works, sculptures, photo-montages and collages. They published articles and novels, notably in the periodical Mercure de France, and befriended Henri Michaux, Pierre Morhange, and Robert Desnos. Cahun worked with Man Ray, and founded the left-wing group Contre Attaque with André Breton and Georges Bataille. The title of her 1930 diaristic publication Aveux non avenus (translated as Disavowals), illustrated by Moore, enigmatically suggested that for all that is revealed, much is still hidden or has been lost. In the late 1930s, Cahun and Moore moved to the island of Jersey, off the coast of Normandy. During World War II and the German Occupation of the island, they produced and distributed anti-Nazi propaganda. They were caught, imprisoned, and sentenced to death, but survived when Jersey was liberated by the Allies in 1945. Cahun never fully recovered from her maltreatment in prison and died in 1954 at age 60. Her work directly influenced contemporary photographers such as Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, and Nan Goldin. Her works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.

In Disavowals, Cahun writes: "Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me."