Author Description

<p><b>'Yevonde's '30s portraits of high-society beauties and Hollywood stars are finally getting the attention they deserve.'</b> - <i>British Vogue</i><br> <br> <b><i>'Yevonde: Life and Colour</i> opens at the revamped National Portrait Gallery ... and will feature a comprehensive selection of works dreamed up by this brilliant artist across a 60-year-career. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more joyful show anywhere in the country.'</b> - Jennifer Higgie, <i>The Telegraph</i><br> <br> <b>'Be original or die would be a good motto for photographers to adopt...let them put life and colour into their work.'</b> - Yevonde.<br> <br> ----------<br> <br> Yevonde (1893-1975) was a businesswoman and tireless creator, as an innovator committed to colour photography when it was not considered a serious medium, her work is significant in the history of British portrait photography. Yevonde championed photography during a time where there were few women photographers working professionally, and this book tells the story of her life, works, and 60-year career.<br> <br> <i>Yevonde: Life and Colour</i> brings the photographer's works together again for the first time in 20 years and features previously unpublished works. This book showcases her experimentation with a range of techniques and genres including colour photography, portraiture, still-lifes, solarisation, and the Vivex colour process, and repositions her as a modern artist of the twentieth century.<br> <br> This highly illustrated publication provides in-depth context to Yevonde's images, considering their aesthetic and mythic references. 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.</p>