Cahun Photographs

There are many classic paintings which depict the artists looking at themselves in a mirror. Usually they refer to narcissism, voyeurism and being the object of the male gaze. However, in this self-portrait, Cahun is not looking at themself, they are looking at us looking at them. They wear a long, chequered coat, which they hold closed. The coat conceals all of their body apart from their face. Yet in the mirror image it appears almost as if they are opening the coat, revealing the base of their neck. They disrupt the viewer’s gaze by staring back in a strong, confrontational and unwavering way. The eyes of the mirror image do not connect with the viewer, rather they stare beyond into the unknown.

The way that Cahun is dressed can be seen as a rejection of traditional ideals of feminine beauty. Their hair is cut very short and the coat they wear is more like a costume than typical female clothing. This adopting of a gender-neutral persona is a common theme running throughout Cahun’s early photography. In a lot of Surrealist art, women typically feature in the role of a muse, child or femme fatale, however Cahun refuses to play into any of these stereotypes. In one of their essays they famously wrote, “Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter in the only gender that always suits me.”

A similar photograph was taken of Marcel Moore, standing at exactly the same mirror, probably during the same photo session. In Moore’s image, she smiles directly at the viewer through the mirror, however like Cahun, she adopts a neutral persona through the covering up of her hair and body, once again challenging the traditional image of a woman at the mirror.