A Riot of Colour
“If we are going to have colour photography for heaven's sake let's have a riot of colour.”
Last week I spent two excellent days in London seeing art and friends and watching one of my favourite bands. One of the exhibitions I attended was ‘Madame Yevonde: Life and Colour at the National Portrait Gallery,’ a fantastic retrospective of Yevonde’s work touching on portraiture, rayographs, Technicolor, Surrealism — and wonderful cat portraits.
Yevonde Philone Cumbers was born on 5th January 1893 in Streatham, South London. In 1899 the family moved to Bromley, and in 1910 she joined the Suffragette movement, which is when an advert for a photographer's apprentice caught her eye. Although she interviewed with suffragette photographer Lena Connell, Yevonde pursued a three-year apprenticeship with portrait photographer Lallie Charles, and at the age of 21 — and with the money she had earned and a £250 gift from her father — Yevonde set up her own studio at 92 Victoria Street. It was to be her path to professional and personal independence, declaring ‘portrait photography without women would be a sorry business.’
With her style of classical portraiture, albeit with a creative flair, Yevonde’s success resulted in a move to larger premises, 100 Victoria Street, and along came the advertising commissions and well-known celebrity sitters. Although she continues to work in black and white, it is in colour that Yevonde (working with the Vivex colour process), became a pioneer. As Yevonde once said, ‘if we are going to have colour photography for heaven's sake let's have a riot of colour.’
While I was already aware of some of Yevonde’s work, I was unaware of the sheer breadth, which was why it was such a treat to be astounded at the NPG. I had never seen the bewitching series Goddesses and Others in its entirety, and it becomes clear while walking through this beautiful exhibition that whatever her subject, they all feel very uniquely Yevonde. As it says on the gallery’s wall, ‘narrative art, Modernism, mythology and Surrealism pervade Yevonde’s portraits, still life and commercial work through her unique vision.’
I love Yevonde because she riffs on many of my interests: unconventional portraiture, cinema, mythology, women photographing women, and Surrealism. Her links to the art movement are strengthened with her portrait of Edward James and another of a massive, gorgeous, vivid lobster. A Surrealist patron and friend of Salvador Dalí, James commissioned Dalí's famous lip sofa because he was inspired by his friend's painting Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment (1934-35). (James would commission five versions of the sofa in 1938 and the Lobster Telephone). Yevonde’s portrait of James had intentions: it was James’ ploy to reunite with his wife Tilly Losch (the Austrian dancer, choreographer, actress, and painter who I’ll definitely be writing about at some point), ‘whose wet footprints he had woven into his stair carpet. The portrait was used on the cover of his 1938 volume of poetry, The Bones of My Hand.’
Given her themes and work, it is wild to me that Yevonde is not discussed more regarding Surrealism, especially when there are so many parallels. Yevonde pioneered colour in much the same way Lee Miller pioneered solarisation — her work even makes me think of Miller’s fashion photography, and there are occasions when her models or sitters appear to have been styled by Elsa Schiaparelli. I’m thinking here about the portrait of Gala Dalí wearing the Shoe Hat as designed by Schiaparelli and how similar the photo appears to Yevonde’s Venus surrounded by Mask and Deep Sea Fish (also 1938).
In the former, both Gala and a Bust wear a version of the Shoe Hat, a collaboration between Schiap and Dalí for the former’s 1937-38 Winter Season (the same collection that spawned the Skeleton Dress and Tear Dress). Venus surrounded by Mask and Deep Sea Fish features a mask that ‘has been given a cigarette and a story,’ while ‘the sexual crustacean, rouged Venus, and incongruous medley hint at sexual undertones.’ This obviously also applies to Shoe Hat, whose Freudian implications have led me, on more than one occasion, speaking and publishing academic articles on this piece of millinery, foot fetishes, and the sexual undertones of Cinderella -- I may put something up for paid subs if there’s enough interest).
Aside from her Surrealist associations, there is no denying the cinematic appeal of Yevonde’s work — I kept thinking about Technicolor splendour of Powell and Pressburger’s affirming and perfect A Matter of Life and Death. I’m sure some of you are familiar with the film, but let me offer a brief overview for those unfamiliar.
When Peter Carter, an RAF pilot/airman played by the dashing David Niven, miraculously survives bailing out of his burning plane without a parachute, he falls in love with the American Radio Operator who had received what would have been his final call (one of the finest opening scenes of a film you will ever see!) However Peter was not meant to survive. After the officials in the Other World realise their mistake, they dispatch a guide (or an angel) to collect the airman and restore the order of things. Yet Peter refuses to accept what was his original fate and is granted three days to appeal his case to live.
It's a fantastic film, one of my all-time favourites (on some days, I say it is my absolute favourite) — life affirmative and romantic film without being cloying or sickly. It’s otherworldly yet so human, and you feel GOOD after watching it, which is always beautiful. The use of colour, as with any P&P film, has always been one (of many!) of the film’s strengths and focal points, and it is wonderfully utilised to create a distinction between the ‘worlds’ we see": the Other World – not necessarily heaven, but still supernatural – in black and white, and the Real World in colour. As Conductor 71 (the guide sent to retrieve Peter) remarks, “One is starved for Technicolor up there.”
A Matter of Life and Death was released in 1946, when Yevonde was already established. She was at the forefront of colour photography, a pioneer since 1930 when colour photography faced negativity. Yet she saw colour as the future, not the past, essential to developing her professional career and photography as a medium. And as the exhibition at the NPG demonstrates, Yevonde was crucial in the role colour played and the worlds it opened for photographers and the public’s imaginations.
“Red hair, uniforms, exquisite complexions and colored finger-nails came into their own. Hurrah! We were in for exciting times!”