Claude Cahun

(Paperback)

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The perfect primer on the surrealist writer and photographer Claude Cahun. Claude Cahun (1894-1954), the chosen name of the artist born Lucy Schwob, was best known in her lifetime as a writer but built up a remarkable body of photographic work that only came to prominence after her death. Politically active and involved with a wide circle of artists and intellectuals, including the Surrealists, Cahun followed her own rules in both life and art. She is best known for her strikingly staged self-portraits, in which she used costumes, makeup and technical effects to tackle themes of identity and self-representation. Her love of symmetry, mirroring, repurposing and retouching was also reflected in her approach to other styles of photography, including portraiture, photomontage and still-life tableaux. Whether working alone or in collaboration with her life partner Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), Claude Cahun was a pioneering figure in the aesthetics of modernity who never stopped crossing boundaries of gender and genre.

Author Bio

Franois Leperlier is a French writer, essayist, poet, philosopher and art historian, known especially for his work on the surrealist writer and photographer Claude Cahun. He has dedicated a large part of his life's work to the rehabilitation and recognition of Cahun's creative works, having rediscovered her nearly forty years after her death in 1954.