Que me veux-tu?/ What do you want of me?: Claude Cahun's Autoportraits and the Process of Gender Identification

This essay explores the early twentieth century self-portraits of the French surrealist photographer Claude Cahun. Critics have claimed that Cahun's numerous and varied autoportraits reveal a woman in the midst of a gender identity crisis. This article argues that her extensive oeuvre does not suggest an individual identity crisis, as much as it deconstructs the process of gender identification in Cahun's contemporary culture. The title of Cahun's collection of poetry and photomontage from 1930, Aveux non avenus (translated as cancelled confessions) serves as the impetus for an analysis of self-portraiture as an act of confession. Several photographs are examined through the theoretical lens of gaze theory; the writings of Joan Rivière and Jacques Lacan help expose and interpret the viewer's unstable, and often times uneasy, relationship to Cahun's art.