Claude Cahun is best known for her portraits capturing the self in a plethora of shifting personalities. Cahun used her photos as a device to present her own image and the overworked characteristics of feminine and masculine identity.
Read MoreHer self-portraits capture posed performances where Cahun would dress as a man or woman under various guises. She fashioned her hair short, long, or completely shaved, and wore playful makeup that disguised her as anything from dandy to doll, body-builder to vampire.
Her performative portraits feature various surrealist aesthetics. From her expressions and poses, to her backgrounds and use of specific props, Cahun encapsulates the vibrancy of Surrealism during its height in the 1920s. Her photographs were strikingly different to her male contemporaries because they focused on self-image as the subject and object of the work.
Disavowals (1930) is a surrealist book by Claude Cahun. First and foremost a writer, Cahun wrote poetry, essays, and novels throughout her life. The book acts as a kind of memoir featuring texts that explore themes of narcissism, love, self-interrogation, gender-fluidity, metamorphosis, fear, and humour. Cahun made a number of avant-garde photomontages to accompany her essays.
The book was published in 1930 by Éditions du Carrefour in Paris, who printed 500 copies. Disavowals is considered a masterpiece of surrealist literature that celebrates Cahun's progressive ideas and ground-breaking artworks.
