Yevonde: Life and Colour

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A Galaxy of Goddesses features works that were created during a themed party hosted by some of Yevonde’s high society clients, wherein she photographed women dressed as classical figures including Persephone, Psyche, and Europa. In July 1935, she launched her new Mayfair studio with An Intimate Exhibition! Goddesses and Others. It is enthralling that there are further revelations to be transformed into colour after almost a century or, for some, for the very first time.”

Yevonde shot onto three negatives through filters to create a separation image ready for printing. Her Vivex colour Carbro-type prints were made at the first colour print service for professional photographers in the UK. In the essay ‘Yevonde’s Goddesses’, included in the catalogue, Lizzie Broadbent writes: “Seen through today’s eyes, Yevonde’s images of (often) titled women dressing up and posing as goddesses might appear dated and elitist… However, through these works, Yevonde was reflecting and, to some extent, subverting contemporary trends in photography, design and society”.Portraiture comes in every medium at the NPG, from toby jug to daguerreotype, church sampler to public statue, marble bust to digital print. A barely used rotunda has now become an eerie gallery of death masks – the London trees outside cast their fluttering reflections on the bronze face of Oliver Cromwell, strangely outsize even in death. The life mask of Marc Quinn, cast in 10 pints of his own blood, has so deteriorated with the decades as to stand as its own presage of death. RALPH ELLISON: PHOTOGRAPHER STEIDL/GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION/RALPH AND FANNY ELLISON CHARITABLE TRUST ISBN: 9783969991800 Most previous exhibitions have favoured Yevonde’s Goddesses Series. The planned show at the reopened Portrait Gallery, however, will broaden the scope considerably and include some newly discovered works. In her autobiography, In camera (1940), she remembers thinking at age 17: “I must earn my own living … To be independent was the greatest thing in life”. In the interwar years of rapid change and technological advances Yevonde became a pioneer working with the Vivex colour process. Her commitment to colour photography and imaginative technique resulted in a unique vision still fresh today.

O'Callaghan, Declan (1 October 2019). "Madame Yevonde". University College London, The Equiano Centre ("Blog for Drawing over the Colour Line project") . Retrieved 25 August 2023. A suffragette at the height of the cause and lifelong supporter of women’s rights Yevonde took up photography in 1914 as a route to independence. In 1921 she declared ‘portrait photography without women would be a sorry business’. As a member of the Women’s Provisional Club for professional women she spoke out ‘in no phase of modern life has women’s influence proved so stimulating as in photography.’

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