Scope and Contents

This book is a well annotated listing of inscribed photography books from a private collection. There is a section that reproduces the inscriptions. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents Claude Cahun (1894-1954), born Lucy Schwob, was a French poet, artist, photographer, writer, performance artist, and "queer freak," who explored the ambivalence of gender and sexual identity in her work. During the 1920s, she lived in Paris with her life-long partner and stepsister Suzanne Malherbe aka Marcel Moore ("the other me"). Together they collaborated on written works, sculptures, photomontages, and collages. Cahun is known for confronting the public's perception of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic both in her Surrealist work and in her lifestyle. Cahun was known for her public appearances disguised as a sailor, gypsy, vampire, Buddha, or angel. Her collected writings were published in 2002 as Claude Cahun - Ecrits (edited by Francois Leperlier). In May, 1930, Editions Carrefour of Paris first published a book called Aveux non avenus, in which Cahun explored her subversive aesthetics in book form. Disavowals: or Cancelled Confessions is significant in that it is the...

Scope and Contents

Several shaped typewriter poems by Claude Cahun are reproduced from her previously unpublished homoerotic, feminist, set in ancient Greek, novel, "Heroines." It was translated by Norman MacAfee from a manuscript written in English and French in 1925. The typings include a mathematical poem, a French shoe, an arc of triumph, punctuation poems and a goblet. Several aphorisms appear in the novel. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The exhibition that accompanied this brochure was curated by Whitney Chadwick, Katy Kline and Helaine Posner. The Sackner Archive lent Cahun's photograph,"L'Humanite Poupee," two copies of the book "Aveux non avenus" by Claude Cahun, Francois Lepelier's "Claude Cahun: Un Monographie," and the catalogue "Claude Cahun Photographe" to the exhibition at its Miami Art Museum venue. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents The exhibition that accompanied this catalogue was curated by Whitney Chadwick, Katy Kline and Helaine Posner. The catalogue was edited by Whitney Chadwick. In her opening essay, "An Infinite Play of Empty Mirrors; Women, Surrealism, and Self-Realization," Chadwick writes that the rediscovery of Claude Cahun in the early 1980s is accompanied with a critical rereading of historical Surrealism. "The neatness with which Cahun's photographs have been annexed to post modern concerns with the decentered subject and with identity as contingent and mutable has obscured the complexity and contradictions of her writings and blinded many to the works' representations of conflicted identities." Katy Kline contributes an essay, "In or Out of the Picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman." She analyses the differences between the two artists and how they each participated in the Surrealist belief system. Kline notes that Cahun was one of few women close to the original Surrealist group and...