Author: un regard oblique

Edward Steichen :: Wind Fire – Thérèse Duncan, adopted daughter of Isadora Duncan, on the Acropolis, 1921 / src: Stephen Ellcock

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Note:
“While on holiday in Venice in 1921, Steichen encountered his friend,
the dancer Isadora Duncan, who persuaded him to accompany her and her
dance troupe to Greece. Hoping to make motion pictures of the dancers at
the Acropolis, Steichen was disappointed when Isadora felt uninspired
and unenthusiastic about participating in such a collaboration, and
posed only for a few still photographs. However, Isadora’s adopted
daughter, Thérèse, also agreed to pose for his camera, and, in his
autobiography, Steichen described their session which produced more
interesting results: “She was a living reincarnation of a Greek nymph.
Once, while photographing the Parthenon, I lost sight of her, but I
could hear her. When I asked where she was, she raised her arms in
answer. I swung the camera around and photographed her arms against the
background of the Erechtheum. And then we went out to a part of the
Acropolis behind the Parthenon, and she posed on a rock, against the sky
with her Greek garments. The wind pressed the garments tight to her
body, and the ends were left flapping and fluttering. They actually
crackled. This gave the effect of fire – ‘Wind Fire…’”(A Life in Photography, chap. 6).

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