Madame Yevonde was born in London, England on January 5, 1893. In
1911, she took a 3-year apprenticeship with Lallie Charles, the
foremost female portrait photographer of her day. In 1914, having
only taken one actual photograph, Madame Yevonde decided to set-up
her own studio and over the years gained quite a unique and personal
style, as well as a name for herself in London society, as a premier
portrait photographer. In 1921, she started exhibiting her work
at The Royal Photographic Society Annual Exhibition and she also
moved to a larger studio and began doing advertising work.
Madame
Yevonde found the early thirties very successful and busy, yet she
was becoming bored with black and white photography and started
experimenting with the newly available Vivex Color process, invented
by Dr. D. A. Spencer. At the time, her fellow photographers and
the general public found color in photographs to be unacceptable
and unnatural and were actively hostile to her new work. Yevonde
made it her personal mission to convert the color-blind public to
see color again.
In
1932, Yevonde hired the Albany Gallery in London to exhibit 70 of
her color and her monochrome prints. This was the first exhibition
of color portrait work in England by any photographer and it received
a glowing review in the British Journal of Photography ... Mme Yevonde
has most emphatically established her place among the leading and
most up-to-date exponents of photographic portraiture.
In
1933, she again moved to a larger studio and flung herself wholeheartedly
into her color work and over the next 6 years did her most creative
work. She was now being sought after by members of London's high-society,
including the Duke and Duchess of Kent, who wanted more untraditional,
artsy portraiture. She was also sought after to do big advertising
jobs by companies such as Christie's, Daimler, and in 1936 she was
commissioned by Fortune Magazine to shoot the Queen Mary on her
maiden voyage. During this time she began her theme of Goddesses
and photographed members of the London elite as mythological characters
including Medusa, Europa, Daphe, and Venus. Today, this is probably
the work that Madame Yevonde is best known for.
In
1939, World War II broke out and soon after Colour Photographs Ltd.,
where the Vivex color process was manufactured and processed, closed
down and Madame Yevonde was forced to stop working in color, leaving
her work void of joy and enthusiasm. This same year her slightly
estranged husband, Edgar died. Even after the war ended, the Vivex
color process was never to become a standard again. Instead of settling
with any other form of color process, Yevonde began experimenting
with black and white and soon developed an interest in solarization.
Over
the years, Madame Yevonde continued to photograph commercially;
in 1964, at the age of 71 she was commissioned to photograph the
country of Ethiopia. She also continued to exhibit her work in group
and retrospective shows. In 1971, she offered her life's work to
the National Portrait Gallery in London. When Madame Yevonde died
on December 22, 1975, she left all of her negatives to her photo
assistant Ann Forshaw, and they eventually passed to their present
owner, Lawrence Hole..
