Claude Cahun (French, 1894–1954) was a writer, photographer, and political activist whose work probed the instability of identity long before it was a cultural preoccupation. Born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, they adopted the gender-neutral pseudonym Claude Cahun around 1914 and began a lifelong artistic and romantic partnership with Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe). Moving between literature, staged photography, and photomontage, Cahun dismantled the visual codes of portraiture, appearing as sailor, dandy, or doll, while writing essays that questioned the fixity of self.
Linked to the Paris Surrealists yet never fully absorbed by the group, they brought the same precision and subversion to their wartime activities, producing anti-Nazi propaganda on the occupied island of Jersey.
