Edited with text by Clare Freestone. Text by Pamela Roberts, Susanna Brown.
The first comprehensive monograph on the forgotten radical innovator of color photography and mythic, surreal portraiture
The British photographer Yevonde was a businesswoman and tireless creator; as an innovator committed to color photography when it was not considered a serious medium, her work is significant in the history of portrait photography. Yevonde’s portraits embody glorified tradition countered with a desire for the new; her most renowned body of work is a series of women dressed as goddesses posed in surreal tableaux from the 1930s. Yevonde championed photography during a time when there were few women photographers working professionally, and this book tells the story of her life, her works and her 60-year career. Yevonde: Life and Colour brings the photographer’s works together for the first time in 20 years. With an abundance of reproductions, and featuring previously unpublished works, the book showcases her experimentation with a range of techniques and genres including color photography, portraiture, still lifes, solarization and the Vivex color process, and repositions her as a key modern artist of the 20th century. It also provides in-depth context for Yevonde’s images, considering their aesthetic and mythic references. Yevonde (1893–1975), also known as Madame Yevonde, was a London-based photographer of portraits and still lifes whose motto was "be original or die."
Featured image is reproduced from 'Yevonde: Life and Colour.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
British Vogue
Rosalind Jana
Yevonde understood that colour was a potent avenue into the realm of feminine fantasy...[she] embraced the full range of its possibilities.
The New York Times: Arts
Emily LaBarge
Yevonde elevated artifice and performative mise-en-scène to new, dreamlike ends.
Blind
Miss Rosen
In Yevonde’s hands, color created a space to experiment and explore with the painterly qualities of the form. She cast leading stars of stage and screen like Vivien Leigh and John Geilgud as gods and goddesses sent down to earth, capturing the surreal space where they were both human and divine in a world just starting to modernize.
Hyperallergic
Albert Mobilio
The operatic effect was further heightened by her use of a color printing process that rendered hyper-rich hues she believed especially suited to female subjects whose “exquisite complexions and coloured fingernails came into their own.” This quote and others from the book reveal Yvonde to be a somewhat complex protofemini
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Featured photograph—“Dorothy Gisborne (Pratt) as Psyche” (1935)—is reproduced from Yevonde: Life and Colour, the first comprehensive monograph on the subtly radical, previously overlooked British studio photographer whose motto was “be original or die.” Published to accompany the critically acclaimed exhibition on view now at Laing Art Galley in the UK, this 240-page hardcover is a universal staff favorite Holiday Gift Book for 2023. Feminist (suffragette), inherently experimental and gifted with a bold sense of humor, Yevonde opened her first studio in 1914, at the age of twenty-one, and went on to pioneer the nascent technology of Vivex color photography. Not only was color photography obscure and even considered vulgar at the time, but successful women professional photographers were then rare. “Mrs. Gisborne posed as Psyche,” Yevonde is quoted in the book, describing this recently discovered, previously unpublished photograph of the London society figure. “Her mournful brown eyes, exquisite mouth and fair hair seemed to me to express the pleasure as well as the pain that Psyche was force to endure.” continue to blog
Featured photograph—“Dorothy Gisborne (Pratt) as Psyche” (1935)—is reproduced from Yevonde: Life and Colour, the first comprehensive monograph on the subtly radical, previously overlooked British studio photographer whose motto was “be original or die.” Published to accompany the critically acclaimed exhibition on view now at Laing Art Galley in the UK, this 240-page hardcover is a universal staff favorite Holiday Gift Book for 2023. Feminist (suffragette), inherently experimental and gifted with a bold sense of humor, Yevonde opened her first studio in 1914, at the age of twenty-one, and went on to pioneer the nascent technology of Vivex color photography. Not only was color photography obscure and even considered vulgar at the time, but successful women professional photographers were then rare. “Mrs. Gisborne posed as Psyche,” Yevonde is quoted in the book, describing this recently discovered, previously unpublished photograph of the London society figure. “Her mournful brown eyes, exquisite mouth and fair hair seemed to me to express the pleasure as well as the pain that Psyche was force to endure.” continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 240 pgs / 200 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $71.95 ISBN: 9781855145634 PUBLISHER: National Portrait Gallery AVAILABLE: 8/8/2023 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by National Portrait Gallery. Edited with text by Clare Freestone. Text by Pamela Roberts, Susanna Brown.
The first comprehensive monograph on the forgotten radical innovator of color photography and mythic, surreal portraiture
The British photographer Yevonde was a businesswoman and tireless creator; as an innovator committed to color photography when it was not considered a serious medium, her work is significant in the history of portrait photography. Yevonde’s portraits embody glorified tradition countered with a desire for the new; her most renowned body of work is a series of women dressed as goddesses posed in surreal tableaux from the 1930s. Yevonde championed photography during a time when there were few women photographers working professionally, and this book tells the story of her life, her works and her 60-year career.
Yevonde: Life and Colour brings the photographer’s works together for the first time in 20 years. With an abundance of reproductions, and featuring previously unpublished works, the book showcases her experimentation with a range of techniques and genres including color photography, portraiture, still lifes, solarization and the Vivex color process, and repositions her as a key modern artist of the 20th century. It also provides in-depth context for Yevonde’s images, considering their aesthetic and mythic references.
Yevonde (1893–1975), also known as Madame Yevonde, was a London-based photographer of portraits and still lifes whose motto was "be original or die."
