Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun

Jennifer L. Shaw is professor of art history at Sonoma State University in California. She is the author of Reading Claude Cahun s Disavowels and Dream States: Puvis de Chavannes, Modernism, and the Fantasy of France.

In the turmoil of the 1920s and '30s, Claude Cahun challenged gender stereotypes with her powerful photographs, photomontages and writings: work that appears contemporary, or even ahead of our time, when viewed with twenty-first-century eyes. Cahun wrote poetry and prose for major French literary magazines, worked in avant-garde theatre, and was both comrade and critical outsider of the Surrealists. Her artful resistance tactics mocked and disrupted the Nazi occupiers of Jersey during the Second World War, putting her in mortal danger. Cahun worked collaboratively with Marcel Moore, her stepsister, lover and life partner, to create some of the most compelling photographs and photomontages of the period between the wars. This is the first work in English to tell the full story of Claude Cahun's art and life.It both recounts her life and analyses her complex writings and images, making them available to a wide audience. Shaw's account embeds Cahun's work in the exciting milieu of Paris between the wars and follows it into the dangerous territory of the Nazi-occupied Isle of Jersey. Using letters and diaries, Shaw brings Cahun's ideas and feelings to life and contributes to our understanding of photography, Surrealism and the histories of women artists and queer culture.