Lot 96: CLAUDE CAHUN (1894-1954)

CLAUDE CAHUN (1894-1954)
Self-portrait, c.1912
gelatin silver print
7 1/8 x 5 1/8in. (18 x 13cm.)

Leperlier (ed.), Claude Cahun Photographe, Jean-Michel Place, 1995, pp.80, 138, no.1.

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Only one other print of this image is known, held in the Collection Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.

According to the catalogue raisonné complied by François Leperlier, the present lot is the artist's earliest recorded self-portrait. Taken c.1912, before she assumed the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1917, the teenage Surrealist reveals the beginnings of her exploration of identity and self. She would go on to develop these themes over the course of her career as a writer and photographer.