Women's Albums and Photography in Victorian England

4. Women's Albums and Photography in Victorian England: Ladies, Mothers and Flirts:, by Patrizia di Bello

I recently saw a fascinating exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago called Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage. The show displayed albums by several upper-class English women who combined the arts of photography, drawing and painting to create images that deconstruct the original meaning of the photographs in a way that precurses surrealism. Di Bello, who is a lecturer in the history and theory of photography at Birkbeck College, University of London, contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue, and this book delves into many of the same themes of the exhibition.

Di Bello looks primarily at two specific albums: that of Anna Birkbeck (Lady Waterlow), created between 1825 and approximately 1847, and that of Lady Mary Filmer, compiled around the 1860s. Lady Waterlow collected in her album poetic and artistic contributions from friends, many of whom were well-known in their own time, such as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Robert Owen. Thus the album becomes evidence, through individual and personal connections, of the owner's participation in public, cultural spheres.

Between Lady Waterlow's and Lady Filmer's times, photography burgeoned. The phenomenon of the carte de visite, those postcard-sized photographs that were exchanged by friends and sold in the marketplace, allowed mass production of images that could then be used in a variety of ways. In Lady Filmer's album, we see images cut from cartes de visite placed in settings congruous and incongruous. She places images of men on painted parasols, just as other album makers placed images on teacups, luggage, sandwich boards and the like. Her access to images of the Prince of Wales, and her placement of a cutout of him in a prominent position on the page "Lady Filmer in her Drawing Room", is an indication of how a woman might use her albums to show her place in society.

Di Bello also looks at photography and albums in the context of the larger society. Such albums appeared in images in advertisements and in women's magazines. Photographs of aristocratic women, of the Queen and her family, were displayed in shops and reproduced widely.

It is di Bello's argument that the women who worked on these mixed media albums understood and were exploiting the way photography "sever[s] people from their original social context into another, created by the image-maker." She suggests that such albums are neither high art nor mass culture, but engaged with both. She notes that as photography lost its exclusivity, through mass marketing of images and easier-to-use photographic techniques, upper-class women began to use other means, such as photocollage, to personalize their albums and emphasize their status.

Having been much intrigued by the images I saw at the Art Institute, I was pleased to be able to read more about the subject. I would, however, caution that this is di Bello's doctoral dissertation. As such, it is written in an academic style that many may find difficult. Once the reader accommodates herself to the dense prose, however, she will be rewarded by interesting ideas and insights into a creative art that has too often been denigrated as nothing more than one of those lady-like domestic accomplishments expected of upper-class Victorian women.

Reviewed as part of

Shoe Fleur

40. Shoe Fleur: a Footwear Fantasy, by Michel Tcherevkoff

Photographer Michel Tcherevkoff noticed that a leaf, the photograph of which he had just taken, looked like a shoe. He manipulated the image and came up with his first "shoe fleur". Inspired, he made more of these fantastic images, now not only of shoes, but of handbags.

These images have been gathered into a book, a book which is itself a work of art. Heavy cardboad covers with the image of a shoe on the front and a handbag on the back are attached to a cloth-covered spine which carries the title and author information. The endsheets are a pale green, with a faint leaf design. The title page is faux vellum, with the script "shoe fleur", overlaying an image of that first shoe, called "La Première". The book is enclosed in a pink plastic slipcase with a ruffled edge that meets the image of leaves on the cover and a circular opening that reveals a variegated tulip that is part of the cover shoe.

Interestingly, although these shoes are fantasies, many of the designs, if translated into less delicate, less ephemeral, materials, would be quite wearable. I would certainly be happy to own any of these items!

The photos and text are enhanced by a preface written by Ferruccio Ferragamo and an introduction by Diane von Furstenberg.

And you've got to love the punny title!

More images can be seen at Tcherevkoff's website.

Chicago architectural photographs - churches and the River

36. Chicago Churches: A Photographic Essay, by Elizabeth Johnson

Take any expressway into the city, and you will be struck by the number of spires and steeples that you see. Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, a place where many people, when asked where in the city they live, name their parish. Chicago is a city of immigrants, and they brought their religions with them and built buildings in which to worship. As the city's demographics changed, a church named for a German saint fills with Mexican worshipers, a Greek Orthodox church becomes a mosque. And in the city that invented the skyscraper, we have a church housed on the top floor of an office building.

Elizabeth Johnson traveled the city (and some of the suburbs), photographing houses of worship. (The title Chicago Churches is really a misnomer, as she includes synagogues and mosques.) They range from the ghetto storefront churches to Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural masterpiece, Unity Temple, from the Gothic splendor of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel to the sterility of the O'Hare Airport Chapel.

The photographs have an old-fashioned sepia tinge to them, and the buildings appear in a variety of moods. Johnson often takes a shot angling upwards, as though reaching for the heavens, and she likes to juxtapose a traditional church building with a modern neighbor, as with the cover shot of a steeple seen next to the antennae of the John Hancock. Interspersed throughout the book are quotations from the world's major religions.

A beautifully designed book, this should find a home on the shelves of anyone who loves Chicago, architecture, photography, or (like me) all three!

37. Chicago from the River, by Joan V. Lindsay

If you come to Chicago any time from May to November, I will advise you, nay, order you, to take the Chicago Architecture Foundation's Architecture River Cruise. I can't think of a better way to see some of Chicago's most magnificent buildings, and also to learn and understand the importance of the river to Chicago's history and growth. It's the best damn tour there is.

One of the reasons it's so good is the docents. The CAF training is incredibly deep, and these people know whereof they speak (even if I don't always agree with them - we're not all fans of Helmut Jahn!). Joan V. Lindsay went through that docent training and acted as a guide on river tours, so it's not to be wondered that she has penned a lovely paean to the river and to Chicago architecture. It's a slim volume, but filled with beautiful photographs and plenty of information about the buildings. The captions don't simply give the name of the architect and date of the building, but describe the style and place the building in the context of Chicago's architectural history. She's also thrown in a couple of old photographs of the city so we can see how it's changed. What's a bascule bridge? Why does the River run backwards? Lindsay knows, and tells.