"What can I do? In a narrow mirror, display the part for the whole? Mistake the aura and the splatterings? Refusing to throw myself against the walls, throw myself against the windows? While I wait to see all this clearly, I want to hunt myself down, to thrash myself out."
I.O.U. (Self-Pride), 1929-1930
~Claude CahunSelf portraits are deeply intimate reflections of an artist's internal being. Through mirrors there is disillusion and manipulation, but through the lens of a camera the soul becomes it's prisoner when the shutter closes and it is then exposed. There is no turning away from that moment; it is forever. Every line and wrinkle of time, even a second of rapture or a life time sadness appears across the silver gelatin plain of every photograph. No other autobiographic portrayal could be more true for it is not a memory to share but a precise piece of emotion in times ever shifting hands.
 |
Claude Cahun, Que me veux-tu?, 1928 "What do you want from me?" |
The riveting and breath taking photography of Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob) strikingly tells the artist's tale of a world without a name or a identity. Every glimpse is masculine and feminine at once. Peculiar without realization that we are both, but in awareness there is empowerment and sensuality. Cahun's body of work is sexless, genderless and erotic.
 |
| Untitled (self-portrait) 1929 |
 |
| Untitled (self-portrait) 1929 San Fransisco Modern Art Museum |
The art of androgyny. Not to dress as a man or a woman but to completely remove those very words from language and express though pure emotional experience. Cahun ambiguously embodies this ability through out every photograph; with overwhelming surrealism it became highly recognized in the early movement in the 1930's. Imagine the strength to live in a era when being this open and expressive was not understood and ultimately faceless in the world. No holding back. Complete fearlessness. A coveted need to eviscerate one's self for all to see, to know, to be aware. To exist is everything.
