la femmes de edward weston - tina modotti

tina modotti lying on the azotea, 1923

tina modotti, the white iris, 1921

tina el buen retiro, tacubaya, 1923

tina modotti, 1921

tina at glendale (girl in canton chair), 1922

tina with arms raised, ca. 1921

tina modotti, nude, 1924

tina modotti reciting poetry, 1924

tina on the azotea with kimono, 1923

tina modotti & edward weston, "anniversary", mexico, 1924, unknown photographer

robo de richey, photographed by edward weston, ca. 1920

all photographs by edward weston unless otherwise noted.

noone is sure when edward weston met tina modotti but it was sometime after 1917.  modotti & her husband, activist & artist roubaix de l'abrie richey (known as robo) moved to hollywood, then still in it's infancy, in 1918.  by april 1921, modotti & weston had embarked on a passionate affair. she was young, beautiful & intelligent & became weston's favorite muse & model. he was an established local photographer in his late 30s, married to flora chandler, with children & already involved with margrethe mather.

in 1922 modotti's husband robo announced plans to move to mexico, asking modotti to join him.  modotti agreed, but delayed her trip & by the time she arrived in mexico, robo had contracted smallpox. a few days later, on february 1922, he died, aged 31.  after his funeral modotti returned to america but, with little to hold her there, returned to her original plan to settle in mexico city. in 1923 she set off again - this time with weston (who had left his wife & children behind) in tow.

the plan was to open a portrait studio with modotti, who spoke spanish, running the business, while weston would, in return, teach her photography. mexico was a period of experimentation for them both; he moved away from the dreamy, pictorialist portraits & focused on evocative nudes (mostly of modotti) & still lifes. modotti focused on soft, textured still lifes. she introduced him to major mexican artists including diego rivera (whom she went on to have an affair with) & josé clemente orozco.

by the mid 20s their idyll began to sour. both had affairs & their approach to photograph had diverged as well. modotti moved away from romantic pictures towards a more political documentation of social change. instead of still lifes & flowers she photographed stoic laborers struggling under heavy loads & calloused workers' hands. weston flourished into a fully modern artist. 

in 1926 weston returned to california effectively ending their love affair. modotti joined the communist party in 1927 & in 1929 she was implicated in the murder of her lover, the cuban revolutionary & communist writer julio antonio mella. by 1930 she was deported from mexico & ceased making photographs. over the next decade she drifted between berlin, moscow & paris. in 1939, after the fall of madrid, she boarded a ship to new york, where - in a happy twist of fate - officials, unconvinced by her fake documentation, put her on a ship bound for mexico.

in january 1942 on her way home from a dinner party at pablo neruda's house, she suffered a massive heart attack in the back of a taxi. she was 45. suspicions of assassination lingered for years but the coroner ruled her death as "natural causes".

upon hearing of modotti's death, weston wrote the following in his journal:

this morning i received post from mexico informing me of the death of tina modotti. i had been dreaming of tina and those heady days back in mexico throughout the night, and awoke bolt upright at the crack of dawn. forgoing my morning oblations, i headed straight for the cellar, where the negatives from those years had been lying dormant since my return from mexico. ironically, i had been printing a portrait of robo when the postman rang. it was a shot i remembered as soon as i saw the negative in its sleeve. i could picture clearly in my mind everything surrounding the taking of that photograph: the smell of robo's hair tonic commingling with the daffodils tina had purchased from a local florist, and which robo had been busy painting the entire morning. i remembered robo's protest when i suggested he clean himself up a bit before i photographed him, and the look tina shot in my direction as i peered into the glass. there we were, robo and i, connected all too intimately in the brief moment of the shutter's release. and there was tina, the objective observer, watching her husband's soul be stolen by her lover.

so you can imagine the eerie feeling i had when i received the news. sure enough, robo's ghost had returned to haunt me. the tables had been turned: the first time we had been in mexico, tina and i, hearing the news of robo's death in california, and now here we were, myself and robo's likeness in california, receiving news of tina's death in mexico. the cruel symmetry of fate. there was nothing i could do but return to the darkroom and watch the images of those days materialize under the ripples of developer, pose by pose, frame by frame, and summon tina from them like a necromancer.

tina is wearing a translucent silk blouse that is heavily embroidered over the breast. her hair is pulled straight back and shiny. she sits on the steps of the hacienda, where the late afternoon sun is shining. there are trees directly outside the window, from which the sun is entering. they act like a negative, the handiwork of the supreme photographer, subduing the light, filtering part of it, redirecting the rest onto the light sensitive paper that is tina. on the ground glass she seems to glow.

tina is reciting poetry. she believes that, being an artist, i appreciate the arts in general, and being a romantic, that i enjoy poetry in particular. she is mistaken tina is driven by impulse and i am old and weary and all too happy to escape into her naivete. she recites a poem in italian about her two lovers, one a strident revolutionary she met on her travels in the countryside, and the other a married man with three children living in sin with a foreign woman in a foreign country. and that is the beauty of it. the poetry of her honesty. yet, it is still such a crushing blow.

i photograph what i cannot possess. i inscribe in silver what eludes me in reality. tina is sunbathing on the azotea of the hacienda.  i have been writing correspondences to the art world in the united states, to reming them that i am still alive and photographing. i take leave of my study for a breath of fresh air, and steal upon tina sunbathing on the worn stone tiles. i quickly head back for the graflex, quietly set the tripod in place, align the camera to the most advantageous position, all with interrupting the silence of tina's repose. 

there she is, hand covering her eyes from the sun, her dark brown nipples standing erect, nearly matching the hue of the blanket beneath her. i peer through my glass. my hand reaches for the cable release. tina is angelic, an angel drifting in the realm of angels. ecstatically, i squeeze the release. 

"are you finished now," tina says.

"you pretender. i thought you were asleep," i say.

"i was, until you came along with all your racket. did you really think i could still be asleep?"

"come now, i wasn't as bad as all that."

she sits up, still covering her eyes. her breasts fall like fruit onto her belly. "do you want to take anymore? how should i sit?"

"what's the point now?" i say, trying to outdo her. "you've ruined the mood. i think i'll even have the destroy the negative."

"you must be mad. why?"

"it would be dishonest not to."

"nobody will ever know the difference," she says as she leans back onto her elbows, supine and seductive.

"no, i suppose they never will."

tina is a conundrum, but she is never cunning. she is always tina. no matter that she offers a different self for every photographic plate i load into the camera, she remains herself. i can see so clearly now, with the passage of time, that it is i who saw her differently. 

here is tina in the flower of her youth. she is dressed in black, surrounded by a black background, her profile emerging from the darkness. her hair is off her face. having just been released from a pin that held it back in place, it hangs precariously over her shoulders, on the verge of submitting to nature. her eyes are fixed on something far away and contain a sadness that seems beyond her years. she is twenty five years old. i am forty one. she and robo have been together for six years, and married for four. in this photograph i have captured something too private and true and yet she is little more than a stranger to me. i immediately fall in love with her. (the white iris, 1921)

la femmes de edward weston - flora chandler/margrethe mather

flora chandler photographed by edward weston, 1909

flora chandler was the daughter of a wealthy land-holding family (some sources say the family would later own the los angeles times, some disagree). seven years his senior, flora was introduced to weston by his sister and her great friend mary. in 1909 they married. a year later, in 1910, their first son, chandler, was born. following were brett in 1911, neil in 1914 & cole in 1919.

somewhere along the way weston's fidelity waned & his attachment to middle-class domestic life evaporated. they would remain married through many of his affairs....shortly before his death, his son cole weston, lamented the poor treatment his mother received. "she was a lonely women. lived a lonely life," he said.  edward & flora maintained an uneasy exchange throughout their lives.  they just couldn't live with each other - weston said he knew he "should have never married her."  still, flora would often provide him with money - doing so throughout their separation when he moved to mexico.  despite her continuing support, weston railed against the domineering and caustic effect she had on his life and on his relationships with his sons.

they would finally divorce in 1937 after being apart for 16 years.

epilogue photographed by edward weston, 1919

edward weston in shadow, photograph attributed to margrethe mather, 1919-1920

prelude to a sad spring photographed by edward weston, 1920

edward weston and margrethe mather 4, photographed by imogen cunningham, 1922

edward weston and margrethe mather photographed by imogen cunningham, 1923

margrethe mather in my studio photographed by edward weston, 1921

nude, edward weston and margrethe mather photographed by imogen cunningham, 1923

margrethe mather was a self-trained photographer. she pioneered dramatic empty space & startling asymmetrical compositions. it is interesting in researching this that most "bios" jump right over her & focus on weston's relationships with tina modotti & charis wilson.  many mention her as simply one of weston's models.

she supposedly left salt lake city because she was a child prostitute & there were people who'd found out about her activities. not much is really known about her early life, although her real name was discovered to be emma caroline youngren.

mather & weston met some time in the fall of 1913 & within a few months they developed an intense relationship. she first became his studio assistant & for the next decade they worked closely together.  in 1920 mather because an equal partner is his studio & by 1921 they were making individual & jointly signed portraits.  this was the only time that weston ever shared credit with another photographer. many have argued the she heavily influenced his work & style, turning him in a more experimental direction by introducing his to her circle of free-thinking artists.

by 1923, the "passionate collaboration" broke down. weston went off to mexico with tina modotti & mather continued to work in los angeles but by then her health was already eroding from multiple sclerous, undiagnosed at that time. 

a decade later weston described her as "the most important person in my life, and perhaps even now, through personal contact has gone, the most important." for whatever reason, she seemed unwilling or unable to speak about their collaboration & relationship. she asked nancy newhall, who was editing weston's diaries at the time to leave her unremembered.  she almost succeeded.  

la femmes de david bailey - penelope tree

penelope tree & david bailey on the street.

penelope tree photographed by david bailey for vogue, april 15, 1970.

andy warhol & penelope tree photographed by david bailey.

penelope tree photographed by david bailey.

penelope tree photographed by david bailey for vogue.

penelope tree photographed by david bailey for vogue, july 1967.

while still married to catherine denueve, she pointed out some photos of penelope tree by avedon in american vogue & said to bailey, "you're gonna run off with this woman." at the time bailey thought it odd as he didn't even know tree.

in 1967 vogue called bailey up & said, "we're photographing this very aristocratic girl called penelope tree, and we don't want any of your nonsense." which he said was like a "red rag to a bull" - "if they hadn't said anything, i might not have noticed. but because they said it i thought, 'my god, now i'm really interested.'" they soon moved in together into bailey's infamous primrose hill flat (even though bailey was still married to deneuve). she was 17 & he was 30. 

their place became a hang-out for hippies during the "swinging sixties" - supposedly penelope installed a ufo detector. they had a passionate but troubled six year long relationship.  bailey has said of tree that she was "bright, bright, bright." their first conversation was about t.s. eliot & continued for eight years. john lennon encapsulated tree by saying "hot, hot, hot, smart, smart, smart!"

bailey credits tree with starting the flower power movement. "penelope was fantastic in terms of avant- garde style. when she was 19, they offered her the editorship of italian vogue. penelope was out there! you should have seen her father's face when she walked out with a skirt made of raccoon tails, and her knickers below her skirt!"

at 21, tree suffered a nervous breakdown. "i always felt as thought i was falling, falling, falling," she has said.  a mysterious skin disease resulted in adult acne leaving her face scarred & effectively ending her career. penelope has said "i was with this photographer whose great love was female beauty and i no longer fitted the bill in any way. i went from being sought after to being shunned because nobody could bare to talk about the way i looked."  that coupled with bailey's many affairs ended their relationship 3 years later. in 1974 they separated & penelope moved to sydney, australia.  today, bailey & tree remain very good friends.

la femmes de david bailey - catherine deneuve

david bailey & catherine deneuve are surrounded by press photographers as they leave st. pancras after their wedding,  august, 1965.

catherine deneuve & david bailey cut their wedding cake, 1965

catherine deneuve walks with her groom david bailey in rome after their wedding, september 1965.

catherine deneuve by david bailey, vogue, august 1965.

catherine deneuve & david bailey at the first annacat fashion show in chelsea, london, 1965.  photograph by patrick lichfield.

catherine deneuve & husband david bailey attend the cannes film festival, 1966

bailey & deneuve

catherine deneuve & david bailey at premiere of the umbrellas of cherbourg, 1965

deneuve by bailey, 1965.

deneuve by bailey, 1966

bailey & deneuve

catherine deneuve by david bailey, 1968.

photographer david bailey was introduced to catherine deneuve by roman polanski, towards the end of the filming of repulsion in 1965. polanski told him, "you're gonna love this french girl i'm making a film with". bailey replied, "no, she's short, and i don't like short women."  when polanski talked her into posing for playboy with bailey photographing her,  "catherine and i just hit it off", bailey recalled. they were married in august of 1965. 

bailey described their seven year marriage as "like trying to manage a maserati when you're used to a ford."  bailey would be deneuve's only husband...she has said, "marriage is obsolete & a trap." although her screen image is cold, bailey has said in interviews that she's not like that. "she's got a good sense of humor - likes a good dirty joke. i love her. we're still friends." 

they separated after 3 years & divorced after 7 years in 1972 (deneuve was already pregnant with marcello mastroianni's child).

la femmes de man ray - juliet browner

1944

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dorothea tanning, max ernst, man ray & juliet browner, hollywood california, photogrpahed by florence homolka, 1946

1946

ca. 1948

man ray & juliet, ca. 1950s

in 1940 man ray left ady behind in paris for new york & then hollywood where he would meet a young dancer, juliet browner. they lived together on vine street & were married in 1946 in a double ceremony with dorothea tanning & max ernst. 

tanning said in her book between lives: an artist & her world: 

man ray thought it was funny. with the intention to marry, we had come to hollywood, where he lived. getting married in hollywood! we all laughed about it, but the next morning he said, "maybe we'll go too. if max can do it so can i." and added, ruefully, "though i've never done anything so rectangular." on october 24, 1946, therefore, a double wedding in beverly hills united, in the eyes of the law, max and dorothea, and man ray and julie. there. it's said and done. painless, forgettable, but fun.

in 1951 juliet & man ray returned to paris where they would live until man ray's death in 1976 at the age of 86.  

in the early 1950s man ray wanted to produce a book as homage to juliet - 50 versions of juliet that he described as her fifty souls. he searched in vain for a publisher in paris but eventually gave up. when art dealer giorgio marconi came across the photographs & asked to publish them, man ray said he'd sell them if & when he could find someone to publish them in book form. finally in 1981, after his death, marconi was able to publish the book: the fifty faces of juliet. juliet kept man ray's promise to marconi & sold him the photographs.

juliet died in paris in 1991 at the age of 79 of a heart attack.