Claude Cahun Analysis.

Claude Cahun was a surrealist photographer, writer, and sculptor from Nantes, France, who is most known for their surrealism work, whilst also finding an interest in depicting topics based around themself, the LGBTQ+ community, and the fluidity of gender identity. Claude Cahun often takes their photographs within an internal studio space, usually of themself, focusing on how they wish to portray themself to the camera as well as within their everyday life and the people around them. I decided to focus my research on the work of Claude Cahun, mainly on their self-portraiture project, which focuses on the portrayal of their struggle with gender identity and sexuality within the 1920’s. I decided to focus on these series of photographs for my research as I intend to create a series of photographs based on myself and my journey and transition as a Transgender, Bisexual male. By researching and analysing the work of this artist for my final major project, I hope to be able to create a series of photographic works based on the theme of gender identity, the LGBTQ+ community based on the theme of portraiture, self-portraiture, and documentary photography.

Many of the photographs created by Claude Cahun keep the focus solely on the sitter within the studio space to fully keep the focus of their target audience on the chosen sitter, in this case Claude Cahun themself. Within this series of photographs Claude Cahun takes photographs of themself in front of a plain black, white, or patterned background combined with elements of surrealism, performance and writing to depict various “personas” to portray their identity, sexuality, and the fluidity of their gender. By doing this I feel that Claude Cahun is able to create a series of candid imagery that creates a story based on the fluidity of their gender identity and expression that matches with the excerpts of text taken from their writing such as: “Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.”

As a lot of the photographs created by Claude Cahun are staged within a studio setting a lot of the lighting, they use are mostly artificial, and often times the surrealism aspects of the photograph are kept quite minimal so that no attention is drawn away from the sitter within their photographs. Similar to the work of Del LaGrace Volcano, whose work I will also be looking at and researching for my final major project, Claude Cahun’s work is focused on documenting their own personal struggles and experiences with gender, identity, and sexuality within a studio space. I feel that by creating their series of photographs in this way it allows Claude Cahun to document the fluctuation within their gender identity, making the photographs seem like a photo-journal documenting their experimentation with gender identity and their sexuality. I feel that by portraying their issues with gender identity and sexuality in this way the artist, Claude Cahun, has been able to create a series of fun and performative photographs that allows them to show their target audience the fluidity of gender and the ways that they express that both privately and publicly around other people. The personas they create within their photographs also allow them to break the gender stereotypes of the time era and the people around them.

Whilst looking at and researching the work of Claude Cahun I have noticed that they use plain black and white or patterned backdrop within the studio space in order to draw attention to the sitter within the photograph, often using the patterns and the shape of the backdrop slightly off-centre to the positioning of the sitter as though the sitter is breaking the frame of the image. These backdrops within the studio space are also used to create a focal point and highlight the sitter so that the attention is drawn directly to them. This is something that I find almost inspirational towards my own ideas relating to the themes of portraiture, more specifically self-portraiture photography, transitions and change and how I intend for my own photographs for my final major project to look.

For my outcome relating to this artist research, I will be creating my own series of self-portraiture photographs based on the theme of the LGBTQ+ community, more specifically my own struggle and transition as a Transgender, Bisexual male. Since I will be focusing my work on self-portraiture, I intend to take photographs of myself within my own home to document my own transitional process and the change I have gone through and continue to go through and the struggles I have and face with gender identity, dysphoria and how I am seen both socially by others and by myself. I hope that by creating my final major project based on this topic and the themes I could spread more awareness with my target audience about the lives of transgender, non-binary and gender nonconforming people.