Please help me find a photograph

Perhaps this will hold you over while I continue looking...

In this one she could be looking at a mirror...

Thank you for those, but she is a beautiful young woman and it's a photograph.

(Gently lifting my petticoats above my ankles as I tip toe around Gus' suggestions...)

Tallbird, Finding a photograph is much harder than finding a painting on the web. There are just too many possibilities no matter what search words you use. t You would really need a name or location (museum, art institution etc.) to even begin with. I suggest you start by researching women photographers of that time period.

I just did a quick look and came up with this site:

Women Photographers circa 1920 CA

I'm sure there are more and better.

Is this it?

Or this?

Gently lifting my petticoats above my ankles as I tip toe around Gus' suggestions...)

Greenwitch--




Better invest in a pair of clogs--you'll save the money in shoe leather.

Tallbirder,

When you say the mirror is circular, do you mean this literally? I ask, because the stark geometry of the circle, as opposed to the gentler shape of an oval, is a characteristic of early modernist aesthetic. Also, is the woman photographer in this image merely looking towards the camera or is she looking directly at the lens? In other words, how self-assertive is her pose. If it's clearly self-assertive or even challenging, again I'd think early modernist.

If you know for sure that the picture is from the 1920's or 1930's, and it has the "modern" characteristics noted above, I'd look through the images of those photographers who worked with Man Ray when he was in Paris. This group encouraged many women to try serious photography. To be fair, it also--particularly in the person of Ray--exploited a lot of women. Take a look at the images, for example, in the L'amour Fou exhibition catalogue.

Good hunting to you!

Thank you boomerang but she is more modern and more clothed than those and she is on the right side of the picture. Also she is only shown to waist level.

Miklos what you say is very interesting. It is definitely a round mirror and her attitude is assertive. But it is in no way surreal.

I will carry on searching (I hope to go to the NPG) and will post it if I can find it again.

Best wishes

Very interesting. (I always learn a lot from Miklos' comments.)

This is all sending me off on a foray of my own. When I broke up with my husband, a sad, amicable, but wrenching set of years, and I was going through all our stuff, I made sure not to take things I wanted that were really his. Specifically some photo books (slaps self, why oh why wasn't I more sticky fingered...).

Anyway, one of them was a book of photos by a fellow who took photos in New Orleans' brothels; I forget the name right now. Not that your photo would be among them, tallbirder, just that an association triggered my memory and wish to see those again.

(and, by the way, welcome to a2k.)

That was an interesting bit of stream-of-consciousness, osso. Very succinct, yet opened up portals to yesteryear creating a clear visual image.

I appreciate such posts.

Did you truly follow it, Gus? I know it is a challenge for some...

I am up to the challenge.

I know neither of these are the photo you're looking for, Tallbirder. But as long as I found them...








More, with a bit about E. J. Bellocq -
http://www.wondersmith.com/heroes/models.htm
(My computer doesn't have the requisite whatever to see the photos, but the text re Bellocq is interesting.)

I examined this photo for a good length of time and then noticed there was a dresser in front of her. Did anyone else see that?