Claude Cahun
#280,161 Most Popular
About
Photographer known for her self-portraits and tableaux that incorporated a surrealist style and gender fluidity. She was also a writer, performance artist and political activist. She was honored by Google on an animated Doodle on October 25, 2021, the day that would have been her 127th birthday.
Before Fame
She attended the Parsons Mead School and then the University of Paris, Sorbonne. She began making self-portraits at the age of 18. She published her first set of writings, a series of monologues called Heroines, in 1925.
Trivia
She was an anti-Nazi activist in the war and disseminated anti-Nazi propaganda when she was living in occupied Jersey. She and her partner were captured by the Nazis in 1944 and sentenced to death, but the death sentence was never carried out. She never recovered from the treatment in jail and died in 1954 at the age of 60.
Family Life
She was Jewish. She was born in Nantes, France. Her mother was Mary-Antoinette Courbebaisse, and suffered from mental illness which lead to her permanent internment at a facility. She was raised by her grandmother Mathilde. She lived with her lifelong partner Marcel Moore.
Associated With
She met non-fiction writer Andre Breton when she joined the Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires in 1932.
