Yevonde (1893–1975)

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Yevonde (1893–1975)

English photographer. Name variations: Yevonde Cumbers; Philonie Yevonde; Madame Yevonde; incorrectly as Edith Plummer. Born in London in 1893; died in England in 1975; educated at boarding schools; studied at the Sorbonne, Paris; apprentice to photographer Lallie Charles; married Edgar Middleton (a playwright), in 1921 (died 1939).

Born Yevonde Cumbers in London, England, in 1893, Yevonde was initially educated by governesses and later attended several boarding schools. While at a Belgium convent school in 1909, she developed an interest in women's suffrage, a cause she championed for most of her life. Yevonde concluded her education at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910, and returned to London the following year and began her career in photography.

She answered an advertisement for a photographic trainee for Lena Connell in Hampstead, and interviewed for the position. Although Connell, who also supported women's suffrage, offered her the job, Yevonde opted instead to apprentice with the foremost woman portrait photographer of the period, Lallie Charles . This training, from 1911 to 1914, was the beginning of a trend for Yevonde, who worked for and with women her entire career. She also gained access into the lucrative field of high society portrait-taking, learning the techniques of making elegant photographs. Although Yevonde supported the women's movement and focused professionally on women, she often lacked a sympathetic attitude toward them, particularly unattractive women who requested that their portraits make them beautiful. In her autobiography, In Camera, she wrote about her apprenticeship with Charles and harshly described her mentor's clientele.

Yevonde opened her own studio after World War I. She worked in black and white, the style of the time, and took portraits for individuals and theater personalities. Regular sitters included such high society figures as Lady Nancy Astor , Lady Edwina Ashley Mountbatten , and Princess Marina of Greece . Yevonde photographed such notable writers as Elizabeth Jane Howard and Rebecca West , and popular actress Gertrude Lawrence . She also produced work that was published in the popular society magazines Bystander and Sketch. In 1921, Yevonde joined the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. That same year, she married playwright Edgar Middleton.

In 1932, Yevonde began experimenting with color. She also began using bizarre theatrical props in a satirical style. For example, one photograph shows a sitter, Mrs. Edward Mayer , posing as Medusa with rubber snakes as head ornaments. This portrait is an example of Yevonde's series of photographs called Goddesses and Others, of debutantes in mythological clothing. By using unusual props, typically bought at toy stores and pawn shops, she deliberately satirized traditional portrait techniques and the representation of women as passive and elegant. Her photos denied any presumption of reality (e.g., the snakes on Medusa's head were obviously rubber), yet moved the viewer. One photograph in this series, of Mrs. Michael Balcon as Minerva, shows a woman in a yellow satin smock wearing a helmet and holding a revolver, this time a toy gun made of black plastic. Behind this beautiful woman ready to do battle is an owl, stuffed and perched, and behind this bird is a tattered and angled backcloth. The total effect is a feeling of destruction, which reflected the mood in Europe in 1935, when this photograph was taken and war was on the horizon.

At this point in her career, Yevonde was a highly regarded and well-established portraitist who had photographed the likes of the countess of Shrewsbury and Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott , duchess of Gloucester, and had worked at a number of high-society weddings. This period, however, was also marked by tragedy with the death of her husband in 1939, and she became less active in the women's movement. With the start of World War II, Yevonde's status as an innovator all but disappeared. Unable to get sufficient materials to continue working in color, and with no market for her creative style, she returned to studio photography, taking portraits, mostly black and white, of service people and families. She also began shooting weddings again. The postwar environment did not bode much better for Yevonde as the prewar style she created never really came back into vogue.

In the 1960s, Yevonde's business declined significantly. One highlight, however, was a 1964 trip to Ethiopia where she photographed Emperor Haile Selassie. Yevonde continued to take portraits until the mid-1970s, although she was reduced to asking an assistant to solicit work by going through newspapers, finding engagement announcements, and calling on the couples to try to sell them a sitting. In 1973, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain introduced a significant retrospective of her work, Sixty Years a Portrait Photographer. Yevonde was featured on a television show about octogenarians in 1973, for which David Frost interviewed her. She did two years later in England.