PHOTOGRAPHY MONOGRAPHS

Claude Cahun

Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays


MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Claude Cahun: Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals)
SIGLIO

Back in print after over a decade: the playful and genre-shattering memoir of a beloved surrealist known for her gender-bending portraiture

Pbk, 6.75 x 8.75 in. / 272 pgs / 13 bw. | 10/28/2025 | Awaiting stock
$36.00



Don't Kiss Me
APERTURE/TATE

Hardcover, 9.75 x 9.75 in. / 240 pgs / 30 color and 410 bw. | 6/15/2006 | Not Available
$45.00



Claude Cahun: Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals)Claude Cahun: Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals)

Published by Siglio.
Introduction by Pierre Mac Orlan. Translation by Susan de Muth. Text by Lauren Elkin, Amelia Groom. Photomontages by Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore.

First published in 1930 by anti-fascist, avant-garde publisher Carrefour in Paris as Aveux non Avenus, Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) is Claude Cahun's wildly radical answer to an invitation to write a memoir. It shatters the very premise of the memoir—the singularity of identity—into sharp and prismatic fragments that she reassembles into an ever-mutating inquiry into "self" and the many masks it wears. Using a multitude of forms (fables, jokes, aphorisms, letters, dialogues, hymns, pronouncements, prophecies, etc.), Cahun's admixture of art and life interrogates, meditates and muses on sex, gender, love, fear and numerous other of her preoccupations.
Long unavailable and obsessed over, Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) was originally published in English by MIT in 2008. The original (and only) English translation returns in a new, revised and redesigned edition, illustrated by large, sumptuous reproductions of the photocollages made in collaboration by Cahun and her partner, Marcel Moore. It also features the original introduction by Pierre Mac Orlan, as well as new essays by Lauren Elkin, Amelia Groom and the translator Susan de Muth. Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals) is a tour-de-force act of resistance; it provokes the reader to enter the capacious, subversive, playful and deeply imaginative space constructed by Cahun in her defiance of all categorization, in her repudiation of a delimited, censured world.
Claude Cahun (1894–1954) was a surrealist photographer, artist and writer born in Nantes, France. Most well known for her performative and gender-bending self-portraiture, her remarkable, multiform oeuvre has received renewed interest in recent decades as a pioneer of queer expression.



PUBLISHER
Siglio

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.75 x 8.75 in. / 272 pgs / 13 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Forthcoming

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2025 p. 70   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781938221361 TRADE
List Price: $36.00 CAD $50.00

AVAILABILITY
Awaiting stock

STATUS: Forthcoming | 10/28/2025

This title is not yet published in the U.S. To pre-order or receive notice when the book is available, please email orders @ artbook.com

Don't Kiss MeDon't Kiss Me

The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore

Published by Aperture/Tate.
Edited by Louise Downie. Essays by James Stevenson, Katharine Conley, Gen Doy, Claire Follain, Tirza True Latimer, Jennifer Shaw and Kristine von Oehsen.

This first comprehensive overview of the oeuvre of Claude Cahun offers a wealth of previously unpublished photographs and drawings, illuminating not only her work but also that of her partner Marcel Moore and establishing for the first time the extent of their collaboration. It also includes the first thorough account of their Resistance operations, trial, imprisonment and attempted suicides during the Occupation. Cahun (1894-1954) is best known for riveting photographic self-portraits that seem eerily ahead of their time and has become the focus of an almost cultlike following. She acted out diverse identities, both male and female, in scenes ranging from severely simple to elaborately staged and was a pioneer of the gender-bending role-playing now seen in works by artists such as Cindy Sherman (born the year Cahun died), Nikki S. Lee and many others. Cahun (a pseudonym for Lucy Schwob) and Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe, 1892-1972) were an extraordinary couple who worked and lived together for more than 40 years. Avid participants in the cultural avant-garde in Montparnasse during the 1920s and 30s, they ultimately moved to Jersey, in the Channel Islands, the only part of Great Britain to be occupied by the Germans during World War II. In Don't Kiss Me, seven international authors examine Cahun's and Moore's lives and art-making; their theatrical, literary and performance activities; their relationship with the Surrealist movement; their writings and Cahun's photographic technique. The extensive illustrations encompass not only Cahun's iconic images but also Moore's drawings and previously unseen photographs, manuscripts and ephemera.

PUBLISHER
Aperture/Tate

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.75 x 9.75 in. / 240 pgs / 30 color and 410 bw.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
No longer our product

DISTRIBUTION
Contact Publisher
Catalog:

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9781597110259 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $55.00

AVAILABILITY
Not Available