Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob) & Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe)
1921-1922
Untitled
Gelatin silver print9 5/16 × 5 7/8 in. (23.7 × 15 cm)
MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York© Estate of Claude Cahun, Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Mrs. Leon Dabo, by exchange, Object number: 1648.2001
Lucy Schwob was a writer, actress, and outspoken member of the Parisian lesbian community between the two world wars. She and Suzanne Malherbe, her stepsister, became partners in life, love, and art, and took the ambiguously gendered pseudonyms Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore for their collaborative theatrical and photographic works. The images they made mostly depict Cahun, and sometimes Moore, in a variety of masculine, androgynous, and feminine personas set in minimally staged scenes in their home.
This print is an enlargement from a negative that was cropped to frame Cahun's face and torso; the full-length image reveals a dandy in a men's evening suit, her stance brazen, with hand on hip and cigarette in hand. Cahun erased the visible traces of her femininity by shaving her head, wearing masculine clothes, and avoiding jewelry and makeup. Through her wide variety of self-portrayals, she undercut the notion of a fixed identity and challenged the concept of a strict gender binary. Cahun and Moore's writingsparticularly their 1930 book Aveux non avenus (Disavowals), where this photograph was reproducedalso explored a shifting, malleable concept of personhood. Cahun considered their self-imaging project to be never-ending, explaining, Under this mask another mask. I will never finish removing all these faces.
Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum
of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)
LL/118432