by Whitney Otto
• • •
Like any novel, this book can be considered both an interpretation of real life and a portrayal of invented lives. I think of it as portraits rendered with words instead of paints—or as a series of photographs. When a photographer takes a picture, she is photographing an actual person, place or object. While there is some play in taking the picture (the use of filters, various lenses, camera speeds, flashes), making the picture doesn’t end there. Many photographers will say that so much more happens in the darkroom or on the computer than a nonphotographer can imagine. There is the manipulation of the printing, of contrast, of color. There is hand-coloring, cropping, touching. Photomontage and collage are still another way to create meaning, using pieces of pictures to make a single photograph. One can also take a series of whole pictures and juxtapose them to create a narrative, allowing the photographer to make her own interpretation of the images. The photographers in my book had film; I have words.
This novel is my love letter, my mash note, my valentine to these women photographers, whom I have loved for most of my adult life. It is a fictional, sentimental history; it is not a biography of these women. It would be a mistake for any reader to skip their biographies and monographs if this novel sparks any interest in their pictures and their lives.
In writing this book, I consulted several important nonfiction accounts of the lives of these photographers and the time period. I am listing them here so that curious readers can read the real stories of these women’s lives on their own.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albers, Patricia. Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti (Clarkson N. Potter, 1999).
Anderson, Mark M., ed. Hitler’s Exiles (The New Press, 1998).
Burke, Carolyn. Lee Miller: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).
Calvocoressi, Richard. Portraits from a Life: Lee Miller (Thames & Hudson, 2002).
Chadwick, Whitney. Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (Thames & Hudson, 1985).
Constantine, Mildred. Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life (Rizzoli, 1983).
Cunningham, Imogen. Imogen! Imogen Cunningham Photographs 1910–1973 Margery Mann, ed. (University of Washington Press, 1974).
Dater, Judy. Imogen Cunningham: A Portrait (Boston: New York Graphic Society Books, 1979).
Dater, Judy, and Jack Welpott. Women and Other Visions (Morgan & Morgan, 1975).
Engel, Mary. Ruth Orkin (Mary Engel, The Estate of Ruth Orkin, 1995).
———. Ruth Orkin: Frames of Life (documentary, 1995).
Gibson, Robin, and Pam Roberts. Madame Yevonde: Colour, Fantasy and Myth (National Portrait Gallery Publications, 1990).
Gordon, Mel Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (Feral House, 2000).
Haworth-Booth, Mark. The Art of Lee Miller (Yale University Press, 2007).
Hole, Lawrence N. The Goddesses: Portraits by Madame Yevonde (Darling & Co., 2000).
Hooks, Margaret. Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary (Pandora, 1993).
Lorenz, Richard. Imogen Cunningham: Ideas Without End (Chronicle Books, 1993).
———. Imogen Cunningham: Flora (Bulfinch Press, 1996).
Lottman, Herbert R. Man Ray’s Montparnasse (Harry N. Abrams, 2001).
Lowe, Sarah M. Tina Modotti: Photographs (Harry N. Abrams/The Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995).
———. Tina Modotti and Edward Weston: The Mexico Years (Merrell, 2004).
Mann, Sally. Immediate Family (Aperture, 1992).
Metzger, Rainer, and Christian Brandstatter. Berlin: The Twenties (Harry N. Abrams, 2007).
Obra Fotografia en la Argentina: Grete Stern (Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 1995).
Orkin, Ruth, A World Through My Window (photograps). Text assembled by Arno Karlen (Harper & Row, 1978).
Penrose, Antony. The Lives of Lee Miller (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985).
Penrose, Antony, ed. Lee Miller’s War (Bulfinch Press, 1992).
The Photomontages of Hannah Hoch (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1996).
Prose, Francine. The Live of the Muses (HarperCollins, 2002).
Rodgers, Brett, and Adam Lowe. Madame Yevonde: Be Original or Die (The British Council, 1998).
Ruth Orkin: American Girl in Italy, The Making of a Classic, introduction by Mary Engel (Howard Greenberg Gallery and the Ruth Orkin Photo Archive, 2005).
Salway, Kate. Goddesses and Others: Yevonde: A Portrait (Balcony Books, 1990).
Stern, Grete. Sueños (Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, 1995).
Weitz, Eric D. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton University Press, 2007).
Letters exchanged by Imogen Cunningham and Roi Partridge can be found in the Imogen Cunningham Papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. For more information, please contact the Imogen Cunningham Trust at [email protected]. I quoted from the following letters:
Roi Partridge to Imogen Cunningham, July 24, 1917
Roi Partridge to Imogen Cunningham, May 28, 1914
Roi Partridge to Imogen Cunningham, August 13, 1914
Imogen Cunningham to Roi Partridge, July 6, 1917
Imogen Cunningham to Roi Partridge, April 8, 1934
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is a solitary business, but it takes a crack team of finely trained experts to make a book. I could not ask for a better agent (or friend) than Joy Harris, as well as everyone at the Joy Harris Literary Agency. Thank you, Susan Moldow, for traveling to Barcelona. And thank you, thank you, thank you to my editor, the wonderful Whitney Frick, whose intelligence, insight, and impressively hard work have made this book better every step of the way. This may sound like hyperbole but, trust me, it’s not.
I am deeply grateful to the writers of the biographies I consulted and of the monographs I studied (please see the Select Bibliography).
Along those same lines, I’d like to thank Meg Partridge for her incredible generosity in allowing me to use Imogen Cunningham’s letters (and for copies of archival material), and likewise to Mary Engel for her support in the Ruth Orkin chapter.
A huge thank-you to Sandra Phillips and Erin O’ Toole at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who kindly answered every last one of my million questions.
There are eight images in this book, and a number of people were involved with securing those pictures. In addition to Meg Partridge, Mary Engel, and Lawrence N. Hole—all of whom graciously allowed use of their respective archives’ images—I’d like to thank Chelsea Rhadigan at ARS/NY. It was my great good luck that led me to Jorge Mara and to Camille Solyagua, photographer extraordinaire (www.camillesolyagua.com), for their picture contributions.
In Portland, I want to thank Ed Schonneker for patiently instructing me in the intricacies of twentieth-century cameras, some almost one hundred years old. And to Jake, Zeb, and Faulkner at Blue Moon Camera & Machine for allowing me to get my hands on their vintage cameras. Also to Brian and Rebecca Newell, Kiyomi Shimada, and Aimee Albrecht.
In other areas of my professional life, I am indebted to everyone at Tin House magazine for their support over the years. And to Elissa Shappell, Gail Tsukiyama, Diana Abu-Jaber, Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon, David Shields, Carolyn See, David Leavitt, and the fabulous Peter Rock. And to the excellent editor Peggy McMullen at The Oregonian. And to Lisa Steinman, Jay Dickson, and Peter Steinberger. And Jane Anderson and Jesús Carles de Vilallonga. And finally, to Katherine Slusher, for sharing her knowledge of photography, her time and, most important, her friendship.
Thank you to Richard Riley, who has earned his own line.
Thank you to my mother, Constance Yambert, my brother, Bill Otto, and sister, Sloane Lowell. Also, Antoinette Sedoux; Michael Brod; Jan Novotny; Simone Sedoux; Ana Castaneda; and Tullio di Nunzio (Mr. Nordstrom). And to Bill and Jo Dean for the vacations and brunches and friendship, even if their mantra is too much, too late, and too far.
And thank you to the marvelous John San Agustin, one of the kindest people I know.
Last, but nev
er least, the twin loves of my life, John and Sam Morganfield Riley. The apt metaphor here would be that life is a plane flight and no matter how neurotic I am as a seatmate, they would never sit anywhere but by my side.
PHOTO CREDITS
The Unmade Bed, 1957 © 1957, 2012 Imogen Cunningham Trust
Machine Worker in Summer, 1937 © Yevonde Portrait Archive
Mella’s Typewriter, or La Técnica, 1928. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
À l’Heure de l’Observatoire, les Amoureux (Observatory Time, the Lovers), 1936 © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP—ARS / Telimage—2012
Fotomontaje de GRETE STERN—“Artículos eléctricos para el hogar”—Sueño N°1
Central Park South Skyline, circa late ’50s, by Ruth Orkin. © 2012 Ruth Orkin Photo Archive
Phoenix on Her Side, 1968 © 1968, 2012 Imogen Cunningham Trust
Crescent Moon #4, 1998 © Camille Solyagua
TEXT PERMISSIONS
The lines from “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” Copyright 1931, © 1959, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1979 by George James Firmage. The lines from “anyone lived in a pretty how town” Copyright 1940, © 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust, from Complete Poems 1904–1962 by E.E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Company.
“It was a face which darkness could kill” (#8) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
“Today” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara by Frank O’Hara, edited by Donald Allen, copyright © 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Am I to become profligate as if I were blond?” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara by Frank O’Hara, copyright © 1957 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic Publishers.
© CAMILLE SOLYAGUA
Whitney Otta is the author of the New York Times bestseller How to Make an American Quilt (which was made into a feature film), Now You See Her, The Passion Dream Book, and A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and son. http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Whitney-Otto
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COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
ALSO BY WHITNEY OTTO
How to Make an American Quilt
Now You See Her
The Passion Dream Book
A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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