‘She definitely used “Madame”,’ curator Clare Freestone told me, as she walked me round the show. I rather liked its feminine pomp, though I suppose it does smack of fortune-teller. The ‘Goddesses’ are now the centrepiece of the headline show, Yevonde: Life and Colour,at the newly reopened NPG, which repositions her as a serious contender in 20th-century photography. Never mind that the series – which boasts a duchess, a countess, a baroness, umpteen ladies and a Mitford sister – was sometimes problematic for critics, one of whom called it ‘a posh pit of decadence’ in the Guardian when it was last shown at the National Portrait Gallery in 1990. She controlled colour like a Renaissance master, painting with it, creating atmosphere and character Her goddesses come to us familiar from their inheritors. Her immortal women are by turns vengeful, erotic, sad and gay as emotionally radiant as a Powell and Pressburger composition, as camp as a Pierre et Gilles shoot. In her classical series ‘Goddesses’ (1935) she controlled colour like a Renaissance master, painting with it, creating atmosphere and character. Red hair, uniforms, exquisite complexions and coloured fingernails come into their own… If we are going to have colour photographs, for heaven’s sake let’s have a riot of colour.’īut what she went on to create was far better than that. She invested in a new Vivex repeating back camera, exhorting her fellows at the Royal Photographic Society in 1932: ‘Hurrah, we are in for exciting times. But Madame Yevonde loved it, owned it, revelled in it. When colour photography first came in at the start of the last century, it met a surprising amount of resistance from distinguished photographers.
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