Florence Homolka
A glimpse
As I am currently reworking an ever-evolving larger project, I thought I would share something short about an artist I was planning to develop in richer detail but has since become more of a regular guest star than a headliner. The beauty of research is it’s ever-evolving nature, and I am hopeful I’ll write about her and her work again at some point. Until then, here’s a very brief introduction to Florence Homolka.
The four of them lie on the ground, forming a concentric circle of cradled heads close together. Man Ray behind his new wife, Juliet Browner, who gently touches Max Ernt's head. Meanwhile, Ernst stares into the distance, his chin resting on the right temple of Dorothea Tanning. The image is both a wedding document and Surrealist artwork. The photographer behind the image was Florence Homolka.
Homolka (sometimes referred to as Meyer or Mayer Homolka) is one of the twentieth century's most undervalued yet significant photographers. Born in New York City in 1911 (d. 27 November 1962) and surrounded by culture from a young age, Homolka studied dance in Paris and Berlin, and in 1943 married Oscar Homolka, an Austrian actor known in theatres and films for his character work. His illustrious and critically acclaimed career included earning a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination in 1948 for his role in I Remember Mama. In 1955, he would work with Marilyn Monroe on The Seven Year Itch. To quote from the Getty Museum website, ‘the couple was part of the close-knit New York theatrical and literary world, on which she drew as she became a photographer. She sold portraits for use in posters and publicity, and her work appeared annually in U.S. Camera from 1947 to 1950.’
Homolka is best, yet seldom, remembered as a portrait photographer of such members of the cultural elite as the actress Judy Garland, photographers Vladimir Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Walker Evans, and Brassaï, and legendary Hollywood couple Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. After moving to Los Angeles in 1943, she worked as a photographer for various film projects. During this time she became a close friend of Man Ray (who was then living in Hollywood) as well as his protégé, which lead to her capturing the Hollywood Surrealist nuptials that day in 1946. Of Man Ray, Homolka said:
Man Ray is my revered teacher, and I am proud when he tells me that I am following in his footsteps as a photographer. This was not so simple, as he took the attitude of a Renaissance master, that his apprentices should find out the secrets of his imagination expressed itself in many different ways. He says that painting is most important to him. I love to visit him in his extraordinary Paris studio, where he is surrounded by his private modern museum, a collection of “Objects of My Affection.”
During the 1950s after moving back East, Homolka worked very closely with Chaplin and took one hundred and fifty images of the older actor and director on the set of Limelight (1952), his last American film. A deeply personal work as an ageing actor and vaudevillian, it is interesting, but not surprising, to note how revered Magnum photographer W. Eugene Smith is celebrated for documenting Chaplin's opus rather than Homolka. Again, it is an example of a male artist's legacy eclipsing their female colleagues and associates. Homolka was aware of this discrepancy, and once noted her hesitation and nerves before presenting the results to Chaplin. ‘He had asked me to make him young and handsome,’ she notes, but she needn't have worried: Chaplin was delighted with the images. ‘When he reached a shot of himself in gray coat and hat walking the streets, he exclaimed, “I'm so handsome I have to kiss myself!” — and he actually laid a kiss on the photograph.’
The double wedding was one of the images Holmolka included in her 1962 self-published book, Art in Focus. Featuring some of her best-known images, the small treasure trove of her work, both from her time in Los Angeles and New York, included accompanying text and reflections on her images. It’s a document of an artist whose work speaks with untold stories from film sets and friends. Maybe we’ll have a retrospective of her work one day.
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