An Ode: Cahun
Claude Cahun
Cahun, a Jewish-French photographer known for self-portraits throughout the 1920’s and 30’s, was the first body I saw in art that I wanted to lie inside, whose skin I thought would fit comfortably against mine. He/She/They once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.” On their gravestone in Jersey, two Stars of David sandwich the birth name that they left behind, explaining in a letter to Paul Levy, “I always used a pseudonym to write, the name of my obscure Jewish relatives (Cahun) with whom I felt more affinity.”
Cahun Cahun Cahun whose name I think of in threes, or maybe in sets of eighteen, (חַי/to life), Cahun/Cahun.
What name do you use to speak to your art?
Cahun Cahun Cahun, whose bald head and beaked nose mark Semitic queerness, a breathing image captured in black and white: “I Am In Training”, Silver Gelatin Print, 117mm x 89mm, 1927. Held by the Jersey Heritage Collections, gently faded over time into dark blues and shimmering greys. Against a dark curtained background Cahun’s stark painted face peers outward, setting a theatrical scene that positions its viewers as an audience. Black eyes are framed by dandy-style curlicues above, and dark hearts painted on cheeks below. Cahun’s nose gently emerges against white powdered skin, its beaked tip hovering atop bow lips.
This is/They are immediately and unapologetically queer. Using His/Her/Their own body, Cahun embodies a character that blurs and subverts. Their/Her/his flat chest embellished by large circular rubber nipples and (above) Cahun’s painted face, the moulin rouge.
Cahun, it was you who showed me a manner of gender.
Who gave me a space of men, women, people, genderless creatures of the past and present, an existence nonbinary, a body untethered.
He/She/They documented an image of self unmediated by men. Cahun, who held the carefully constructed world of His/Her/Themself in hands filled with theatre sets, surrealism, and facade. The embrace of absurdity and bird skulls, face-paint, dotted cheeks, twisted hair, rouged lips, layers upon layers of characters, puppets and play.
Cahun says, “If I vibrate with vibrations other than yours, must you conclude that my flesh is insensitive?” (Heroines, 1925)
Hold these words carefully, surround your space with dolls and masks (under this, another/ an other, never stop removing them, another/an other, find another body to exist within, another/an other…
Cahun, who layers hands upon hands, faces upon fact, futures upon fiction,
Cahun Cahun Cahun who shows me a power of namelessness,
Cahun who reaches out of Her/His/Their photographs into my small Jewish soul and holds it close,
Cahun who teaches us to say, again and again,
do not kiss me/I am in training.
