I found this image in a recent exhibition I went to at Musees d’Orsay, Paris. It was called- Qui a peur des femmes photographes? (1839-1945)
The image below by Barbara Morgan was also in the show. The aesthetic reminds me of Martha Graham. I like the montage, the movement & the Modernism.
Below are some of my favourite Francesca Woodman photographs. She is probably my favourite photographer and I find her incredibly inspiring. In a sense, she was too talented, if thats possible. I went to see her show at the Victoria Miro Gallery about 6 years ago. The prints were all medium sized beautifully printed and framed. All hung at the same height. There is a deep integrity combined with a sublime elegance to her work that makes it one of a kind and profoundly haunting & memorable.
Fancy dress party at Nita’s parents house, circa 1922.
Nita is last on the right.
In real life these are highly detailed negatives. The whole party was photographed in a series of stills against the curtains. I love that all the people have made their costumes. It makes it a much more telling document of its time.
I love these Ed Ruscha photos, I find them really sensual. I think he has a genuine understanding of architecture by showing its form in a photograph and also what the myth represents- the dream (the building may represent). When you go inside some Los Angeles buildings they make you feel different, like all good architecture should. I am drawn to modernism, like Ruscha was.
These are a reference for me when I finally get out to Los Angeles and film some real black & white film with a cinematographer.
Shadows outside the sound stages, Studios at Paramount lot. Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA
I also need to get permission to go on the Paramount lot (above) to photograph. Still not sure whether to dress up as Nita or hire an actress. At the moment I’m still thinking about dressing as her. I have got into costume making recently and am going to probably attend a sewing course. I’m starting by making Dorith and I simple white ‘robe’ costumes (Roman style)- these take minimal sewing and hang well.
I like this Katy Grannon photo (above) because it reminds me of a film still (it might be one as she has recently made an amazing film). I like the colour in the black & white tone and the golden light, even though this has silver in it (looks like a silver gelatine print). I think this is analogue because digital alone still finds it hard get that metallic quality film has- it has’t got the materials or the chemicals.
Not sure what I’ll do with this yet but like the map/ chart nature of the illustration. I like the perspective.
(Nita played Jaqueline at the Coliseum Charing Cross in Me and my Girl. (Undated-1941) So she would have stood on that stage and performed for weeks with a different audience every time.
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I once sang in a choir at the Royal Festival Hall and I was so terrified that my knees almost gave way. I would not be able to get on stage in front of an audience that big and sing solo- maybe I could talk but I couldn’t sing because I would be too terrified. I was surprised at the feeling I experienced on stage and I remember making a note of it in pencil on my copy of Handels Messiah and getting a curt once over from my Alto neighbour.
Beginning to make a fan prototype.
Untitled (Red fan) Kazuo Shiraga
I like the size of this and the fact its a sculpture. I’d like to see it in real life. I think it looks quite erotic as an object. It makes you want to reach out and touch it. I wonder what its made from?
I’m making a fan out of one or more of the photographs. It’s more difficult than it sounds but I’ve made a start with it. I went to a fan making workshop and will experiment before I go back there. You have to have strong hands for it- towards the end of the 3 hours I could feel the muscles in my hands aching. I usually only get sore hands when I’m in the darkroom because I don’t like wearing gloves. I will be using the arch shaped collage I made of Nita sunbathing below. The shape suits the fan template:
I love Helen Chadwicks work (above). This is liquid emulsion on vinyl. I have some liquid light to try out on wood. First I need to find an old Silver Cross Pram or similar and photograph it against black velvet in the studio. I plan to put a painted photograph of Dorith in the pram. Pram in the hallway. It might not work though, won’t know until I try it. Will photograph the empty pram too as it might work on its own.
I need to find a pram to photograph that looks like the one below:
I started to organise some of the objects and things that belonged to Nita- items her & my mother gave me previously or that were in her archive along with photos and documents. The flowery pillow case you can see below on the right was meant for night gowns but was stuffed full with about ten pairs of arm length white kid gloves. I will do something with these, with performance or a moving image piece as they are so theatrical. It looks like she wore them regularly because she has mended the fingers with tiny stitches. I will wear them and film myself. I’ve got a performance piece in mind.
The Shoe Doll (ii) Wendy McMurdo
For the studio shoot, I was influenced by the image above from the photographer Wendy McMurdo. I love this image and how the pre-owned object itself seems to come to life in it. With quite flat light (which I prefer) the artist has managed to conjure up a presence for the doll, a personality, which is exactly what it would have had in its previous owner’s mind- a child. It’s very tactile to, making you want to handle it. The fact that its a shoe also explores the idea of children’s powers of imagination- how much of these powers do we lose or suppress when we become adults?
I also started to photograph my six year old daughter Dorith on my Hasselblad, as part of the Nita project. Dorith has persistently shown a desire to perform. Most of her performances are dramatic freeze frames using dance & movement. I thought the obvious continuum to the Nita project was to include Dorith and myself in our roles as mother, daughter, photographer, performer. This perhaps was Dorith’s response to Great Aunt Nita’s archive as well as mine. Our home life is, though, like Nita’s seemed to be, very creative and a little bit theatrical, in that we are all play acting a lot of the time, dressing up, putting on silly voices, singing, dancing and performing to each other for fun.
Dorith, Performance (i) 2015
The archive is full of photographs of Nita, from a young age onwards performing to camera, taken by her mother, ‘Ma Harvey’. These images are extraordinary in many ways but I think mainly because they show an innate understanding of role playing as photographer and as performer.
This creative exchange between the mother and daughter was fine tuned for four decades and as a domestic photographic document it makes a powerful contrast to the highly constructed Paramount Studio images.
Recently I have been asked to contribute 8 pages to Photography & Culture journal. I have been using creative writing in my response to the archive for about three years now. Nita kept a journal which was published in Film Pictorial Magazine in 1933. She would post a letter from Hollywood to London every Wednesday, describing her experience there as a young actress. Her magazine journal was written in the tropes of Hollywood and whilst it is important as a document it is her personal letters that tell another story. Her real story, often written in letters to her mother, was full of distaste and cynicism for what she saw and experienced. It is in these letters and manuscripts that I found Nita.
For the journal I have been writing a short story about my childhood visits to the then semi-reclusive Nita and Great Uncle Ling. A descriptive term that kept surfacing for me was gothic. Perhaps it was the old stone house itself that seemed to encase them in their past. Perhaps it was the heavy, carved mahogany furniture and Ivy wall paper. Or was it Nita’s dramatic, white powdered face that smelt so sweet whenever I leant in to kiss her.
Here’s one of the many passport photographs from sessions where Nita would play to camera. I think she was trying out poses and practising as an actor. She must be about thirteen here, circa 1927.
It’s easy to forget, as a person who works behind a camera (usually) that if you propose to be in front of the camera you had better know what the camera does to you. At least then you can choose how to act. All the minutiae and the, is this working? Is it too much. Better to underplay than to over do it. But here, Nita is performing and acting to camera in a way that fully acknowledges the camera’s presence. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford would do that to loveable and great effect. And these were the stars of the day.
This photograph has a remarkable quality to it as an object. Much better than modern passport images this has a broad tonal range and a metallic, silver quality to it. Its quite beautiful and its miniature size adds to this.
This is a paper negative from the Nita archive. I didn’t know exactly what it was so I took it to my printer, Brian at BDI images and he told me. The paper negative would be contacted with a sheet of photographic paper and glass laid over the top rather than printed using light shone through it via an enlarger (as with film negative), so it would only be able to maintain its original size of 4″ x 4″. Each image within is the size of a passport photograph. The paper negative is more fragile than film negative as it will eventually disintegrate faster. Perhaps for this reason it was made on 2mm thick card.
I printed it as a positive but decided to keep it as a paper negative scanned in its original format because you can see Nita’s movements and rotation to camera more clearly in negative.
I think this was taken in a commercial photographic studio that would have offered a passport service. In the archive there are lots of what are essentially ‘self portrait’ passport photographs of Nita and they all have a playful, theatrical and often comic charm to them. I wondered at this and then remembered that this was the era of silent films where expression was everything.
I wonder if Nita spent her pocket money taking these self portraits for fun, practising to camera or whether she was building an actress portfolio? Nita was about thirteen or fourteen here, circa 1927.
Nita project: There was a 35mm Nitrate casting film reel in the archive that I had digitised. When I first viewed it I couldn’t believe how brutal it was. I think it was only meant for the eyes of Hollywood directors and producers, which makes it all the more revealing. Here’s a still from it, circa 1933.
