Madame Yevonde - Goddesses series, 1935

Lady Millbank as Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons

Referencing classicism and ancient mythology, Madame Yevondes’ images from her Goddesses series, 1935, seem theatrical and stylish, sometimes with a touch of high camp humour. They display to me, a love of props, dressing up and dramatic posing. Technically adept and innovative, she used studio lighting and championed the Vivex colour process from its invention in the early 1930’s, until the factory manufacturing and processing the system closed down in 1939. In 1932 she held the first exhibition of photographic colour portrait work in England.

Eileen Hunter (Mrs Ward Jackson) as Dido

Incredibly staged, I read that the series reinforces her past suffragette leanings, posing the subjects as heroines or powerful goddesses. It is interesting that she was well connected, her subjects were beautiful, glamorous, upper class society women or well known actresses. I wonder if her exhibition/reputation would have been so successful if her sitters had been normal women. I can't help thinking of, for example, Sam Taylor Wood...

“Be original or die”
- Madame Yevonde

The Yevonde portrait archive: http://www.users.waitrose.com/~felice/

Benham Gallery Seattle: http://www.benhamgallery.com/artists/yevonde.html
National Portrait Gallery: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp06547&role=art

Pedro Meyer

“Where is the Money?” © Pedro Meyer, 1985-2000

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures” -

Ralph Waldo Emerson, referenced by Pedro Meyer

Primarily a documentary photographer, Pedro Meyer is one of the earliest to experiment with digital photography, starting in the early 1990s. He created and curates Zonezero.com, one of the first photography websites on the internet. It showcases photographers from around the word as well as his own images and essays. I find him fascinating as he challenges the notion that documentary photographs are expected to record the truth or what really happened, whereas controversially, some of his digital work is in fact a collage of images used to produce a final image, and yet he still refers to this work as documentary, or truth, rather than fiction.

“Face it, all photographs are and always have been the product of manipulating reality. They are simply interpretations of the photographer who made them”. To him, photography has always been a manipulated medium, through cropping, sandwiched negatives, retouching or other techniques. He sees himself as constructing realities that are more truthful to what he remembers than to what may or may not have been there.

"Viejo con billetes” © Pedro Meyer, 1985

“Deshoyando al Borrego” © Pedro Meyer, 1985

Zone Zero website: http://www.zonezero.com/
Redefining documentary photography: http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/photography/fieldskinds/document/redefining.htm
Museum of Contemporary Photography: http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/meyer_pedro.php
Online debate: http://67.43.164.180/FUDforum2/index.php?t=msg&goto=81&rid=0