Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore
‘I no longer exist? Perfect, now nothing can come between us!’ (Cahun in ‘Cancelled Confessions’)
A website for news, information and scholarship about the life and work of Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore: Queer pioneers, surrealist writers, photographers, artists and resistance fighters who took on the Nazis in 1940 with their ‘paper bullets’.
You are invited to click on links (left) to discover more about these fascinating characters from a hundred years ago.
February 2026: Claude Cahun month at Torriano Meeting House, London NW5
‘Cancelled Confessions’ critics’ number one in ‘Cultured’ magazine’s best of 2025
Review in Brooklyn Rail ‘Cancelled Confessions’ 2025 US edition
Brian Dillon review of the US edition of ‘Cancelled Confessions’ November 2025
Review of the Thin Man Press UK edition of Cancelled Confessions
Extract from ‘Cancelled Confessions’ in Airlight Magazine
Early Writing: Uranian Games has been translated by Susan de Muth and will be published in February 2026 as part of the Cahun Festival. Read an extract here.
The Photomontages – see them in context, find new clues to their hidden meaning
Queer Activists – 1924: fascinating article by Michel Carrasou showing how Cahun & Moore were co-founders of Inversions the first French queer magazine.
Michel Carassou: opinion, ‘Why Cahun & Moore fell silent about homosexuality’.
Their masterpiece, ‘Aveux non Avenus’ [Cancelled Confessions (or Disavowals)] is published, 1930
Jersey: Resistance against the Nazi Occupation 1940 – 45
Their memoirs about the occupation, their imprisonment, trial and death sentence
A growing legacy: Designer Ellen Poppy Hill’s fashion spread in Vogue, plays, operas, films and more that Cahun & Moore have inspired
‘Strikes me that Cahun’s work is uniquely prescient and incredibly relevant today. As both an artist and activist, she shows us how to resist and reinvent.’
—Zoe Leonard, Artist, 2024
‘Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore are the great, great aunts, or uncles, or whatever, that we wish we had —and now do.’
—McKenzie Wark, author of Love and Money, Sex and Death: A Memoir, 2024
‘Cahun was a pioneer of gender-bending role-playing… eerily ahead of her time, she has attracted an almost cult-like following. I am a huge fan.’
—David Bowie, 2007
‘One of the most curious spirits of our times.’
—Andre Breton, 1932
Claude Cahun 