Aveux non Avenus
CAHUN, Claude
Paris: Éditions du Carrefour. 1930.
Description:
Limited edition, one of 370 (from 500) examples (numbered 48 to 417, this being 376) on velin pur fin Lafuma. pp. IV, [2], 237, [7]. Many pages unopened. In excellent, fine condition in the original glassine wrapper. Some slight soiling and foxing but overall a superb copy of what has become a foundational text of gender-fluidity.
With ten full page heliogravures of photo montages by Cahun and Marcel Moore, the pseudonym of Cahun's partner Suzanne Malherbe. Claude Cahun was the pseudonym of Lucy Schwob whose divorced father married the widowed mother of Moore/Malherbe thus making the two girls step-sisters. Although Cahun, despite always referring to herself as "elle" would not necessarily have regarded herself as a girl: "Brouiller les cartes. Masculin? féminin? mais ça dépend des cas. Neutre est le seul genre qui me convienne toujours" (p176, Aveux non Avenus). Fluidity was not just a matter of gender for Cahun. It guided her entire aesthetic, from her uncompromising surrealism in which she presented multiple faces to the world, to her refusal to restrict and constrict artistic categories. Aveux des Avenus (usually translated as Disavowals or Cancelled Confessions) exists in the world between photography, memoir, poetry, aphorism, reality and imagination, dreaming and waking: like Cahun, it is impossible to categorise and, also like Cahun, its time has come.
Description:
Limited edition, one of 370 (from 500) examples (numbered 48 to 417, this being 376) on velin pur fin Lafuma. pp. IV, [2], 237, [7]. Many pages unopened. In excellent, fine condition in the original glassine wrapper. Some slight soiling and foxing but overall a superb copy of what has become a foundational text of gender-fluidity.
With ten full page heliogravures of photo montages by Cahun and Marcel Moore, the pseudonym of Cahun's partner Suzanne Malherbe. Claude Cahun was the pseudonym of Lucy Schwob whose divorced father married the widowed mother of Moore/Malherbe thus making the two girls step-sisters. Although Cahun, despite always referring to herself as "elle" would not necessarily have regarded herself as a girl: "Brouiller les cartes. Masculin? féminin? mais ça dépend des cas. Neutre est le seul genre qui me convienne toujours" (p176, Aveux non Avenus). Fluidity was not just a matter of gender for Cahun. It guided her entire aesthetic, from her uncompromising surrealism in which she presented multiple faces to the world, to her refusal to restrict and constrict artistic categories. Aveux des Avenus (usually translated as Disavowals or Cancelled Confessions) exists in the world between photography, memoir, poetry, aphorism, reality and imagination, dreaming and waking: like Cahun, it is impossible to categorise and, also like Cahun, its time has come.