Claude Cahun
One of the first female photographers to devote most of her
image production to the self-portrait. Her distinctive feature
was that she used herself as a model to present a number
of experiments with identity and gender – both as a reflection
on her own search for an identity and as a comment on the
social gender perception of the time.
Cahun staged herself beyond the familiar gender roles as an
androgynous or transexual being in a surreal world.
André Breton (1896-1966) and others admired her for the
distinctive way she problematized female identity and the
female gender. Her self-portraits are among the most important
and radical expression of the re-examination of female identity
in the 1930´s.
