Author: un regard oblique

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Emmy Hennings with Dada-doll, 1917.

Photo from Hans Richter, Dada and Anti-Art, (Thames and Hudson, 1965)

Emmy Hennings (1885-1948) was a performer and poet, and wife of the Dadaist Hugo Ball. Despite her critical role in the founding of the Cabaret Voltaire which launched the Dada movement, and her centrality in its performances (particularly as its only female member), it is difficult to locate information on her that does not correspond directly to her relationship with Ball.

Thomas F. Rugh describes her as “a primary contributor to the sensual display of bombast at the cabaret”, personifying the spirit of the Dada movement with which she was so intimately involved as “impulsive, enigmatic, creative, and at odds with her materialistic culture”.

The Zürcher Post wrote of her on 7 May, 1916: “The star of the cabaret however, is Mrs. Emmy Hennings. The star of who knows how many nights and poems. Just as she stood before the billowing yellow curtain of a Berlin cabaret, her arms rounded up over her hips, rich like a blooming bush, so today she is lending her body with an ever-brave front to the same songs, that body of hers which has since been ravaged but little by pain”.

via

foxesinbreeches

Rigmor Rasmussen in Der Zug nach dem Westen

Atelier Balázs ~ Rigmor Rasmussen in the revue ‘Der Zug nach dem Westen’ (The Train to the West), Berlin, 1926 | src getty images

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

William H. Mortensen :: Art study for Selected Quatrains from ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam with Camera Projections (*)’, 1925.
(*) The photographer’s first book. This hand-bound title was produced by Mortensen while he was designing sets for a mid-1920s production of the Rubaiyat entitled ‘A Lovers Oath’. | src hauntedBYstorytelling

Where in Heaven Will I Find You

Joan Vilatobà ~ En quin lloc del cel et trobaré? | Where in Heaven Will I Find You? (Detail) | src MNAC
Joan Vilatobà ~ En quin lloc del cel et trobaré? | Where in Heaven Will I Find You? ca. 1903-1905. Silver gelatin on baryta-coated paper | src MNAC

The massive industrialization of the photography based on the new models of Kodak in 1888, marked the birth of amateurism, and what could be considered its elitist complement and counterpart, Pictorialism, understood to be the first discourse of artistic legitimization of photography.    

Faced with technological standardization and documental utilitarianism, Pictorialism proposed the use of pigmentary techniques that evoked the manual work of paintings, as well as their symbolic, picturesque or sublime themes, in accordance with the aesthetic paradigms of the modern art of the 19th century, which was based on the romantic principle of genius. In some way the concept of “creation” was introduced into photographic techniques, vindicating the figure of the photographer as an author and interpreter of reality.  Within this framework, Joan Vilatobà created a series of works which moved between symbolic allegory and customs, and photography through topics such as beauty, death, love, etc., of which Where in heaven will I find you? is an example. | quoted from MNAC ~ Museu Nacional d’ Art de Catalunya

Joan Vilatobà ~ En quin lloc del cel et trobaré? | Where in Heaven Will I Find You? (Detail 2) | src MNAC

Courtney Crawford, ca. 1924

William Herbert Mortensen (1897 – 1965) :: Courtney Crawford with Masks, ca. 1924. | source monster brains
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William H. Mortensen (1897 – 1965) · Courtney Crawford with Masks, ca. 1924. | source lexiconmag
more [+] by this photographer