Claude Cahun, The French Photographer’s Birthday Celebrated by Google Doodle
3 min read
Today (October 25), Google honored Claude Cahun by showing an animated doodle on its homepage. Google commemorates special holidays and personalities by changing their search homepage.
Who was Claude Cahun?
Today’s Doodle celebrates the 127th birthday of Claude Cahun, who was a French author and photographer. He became famous after purposely changing his self-portrait photography that challenged gender and s*xuality in the early 20th century. Claude was not only a photographer or author but also a great sculptor. He wrote books based on political and personal.
Cahun was born November 24, 1894, in Nantes, France, in a Jewish family. He adopted the pseudonym Claude Cahun in 1914. They are best known as writers and self-portraitist. As a writer, he also wrote the so-called self-portrait Disavowals in 1930. This piece of writing became critical among the public as it questioned gender.
Claude also worked as a propagandist and resistance worker during World War II. He got arrested by Nazis in 1944.
His grandfather was David Leon Cahun, an influential French artist, and his father was a newspaper owner. From childhood, Cahun was surrounded by creativity.
He also stood up against the societal convention when he moved to Paris in 1914. Cahun shaved his head and gave up his name. He adopted the gender-neutral name. However, he revolted against this societal convention so that people could support him. This step suddenly became controversial, and the public started making a fuss.
Cahun continuously used his artistic skills and self-portraitist skills to explore gender-fluidity. For instance, in the 1927 series, he used this line, “I am in training. Do not kiss me.” This series displayed the feminine and masculine characters both. The line between the masculine and feminine was vanishing that portrayed neutrality.
Claude Cahun received a Medal of French Gratitude in 1951 from French Government.
Claude Cahun’s early life
Cahun was born in Nantes in 1894 into a Jewish family. When he was four years old, his mother had a mental illness, which eventually led her to a permanent shift to a psychiatric facility. After her mother’s illness, Claude started living with his grandmother.
Cahun studied in a private school in Parsons Med school and attended University in Paris.
He started developing an interest in photography at an early stage, and in the future, his interest became his career. At the age of 14, he met his love interest, Marcel Moore. After eight years, their romantic relationship started, but they soon became step-siblings.
However, they continued to work together, and soon they shifted to Paris. In Paris, they started holding artists’ saloons at home. Cahun never wanted to become famous, but at the age of 40, when Cahun died, the public started recognizing his works.
Shweta Tripathi
I have graduated as an engineer and has been writing since 1-2 years from college media outlets to other media websites. I have written columns on local magazines and working more on SEO based content writing.
