Category: portrait, Porträt, retrato, ritratto, portret, retrat, Bildnis

Johnston as New Woman · 1896

Frances Benjamin Johnston ~ Self-portrait in the studio as a New Woman, 1896 (detail)

In this self-portrait the photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston poses as an independent ‘new woman.’ On the mantelpiece are six portraits she took of men (from left to right): poet Bliss Carman; A. N. Brown, likely the librarian at the U.S. Naval Academy; Henry Guston Rogers, likely the inventor and playwright Henry Gustave Rogers; architect James Rush Marshall; Smithsonian librarian Frank Phister; and L. M. McCormick, a photographer and member of the Capital Camera Club. [quoted from Library of Congress] permalink

[Frances Benjamin Johnston, full-length portrait, seated in front of fireplace, facing left, holding cigarette in one hand and a beer stein in the other, in her Washington DC studio], 1896

Johnston crossdressing ca. 1890

[Frances Benjamin Johnston, full-length self-portrait dressed as a man with false moustache, posed with bicycle, facing left]; 1890-1900
src Library of Congress
[Frances Benjamin Johnston (right), full-length self-portrait dressed as a man with false moustache, posed with two unidentified women, one of whom is also dressed as a man]; 1880-1900 | src Library of Congress

According to Shorpy ─in this website the photograph is titled “Reverso”─ Frances Benjamin Johnston is posing here with two similarly cross-dressing friends. The “lady” is a gent identified in a few other FBJ photos as the illustrator Mills Thompson.

Admiring a print, ca. 1910

Eva Watson-Schütze :: Woman Admiring a Print, ca. 1910. Bromoil print. | src V&A museum
Eva Watson-Schütze :: Woman Admiring a Print, ca. 1910. Bromoil print. | src V&A museum

The image shows a woman in full length, wearing a long dress and standing at a table in profile against a blank pale wall, holding the edges of a print which is resting on the table. Bright light from a window in the top left of the photograph lights the front of the woman and the tabletop.

This is an example of the bromoil process invented around 1907, in which a bleached image is re-developed with pigment applied with brushes. ‘Pictorialist’ photographers favoured its broad tonal effects and diffuse detail. The print being ‘admired’ in the image is likely to have been a finely crafted photograph much like this one. [Gallery 100, ‘History of photography’, 2012-2013]

quoted from V&A Museum

Portraits of Mayakovsky

Abram Shterenberg (1894-1979) ~ Portrait of Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924. Vintage gelatin silver print. | src Nailya Alexander Gallery

Abram Shterenberg probably was the first photographer who took portraits of Mayakovsky (ca. 1923). Rodchenko used his portraits for the photomontages for “Pro Eto” (About This), the love poem Mayakovsky wrote for his muse Lili Brik.

Alexander Rodchenko ~ The Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924
Alexander Rodchenko ~ The Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924. Museum Series, Portfolio n.1: Classic Images, 1924-1936 | Christie’s
Alexander Rodchenko ~ The Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924. Museum Series, Portfolio n.1 Classic Images, 1924-1936 | Christie’s
Alexander Rodchenko, also Aleksandr Rodchenko ~ Portrait of Mayakovsky, 1924 | src Nayla Alexander Gallery
Alexander Rodchenko ~ Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924. Museum Series, Portfolio n. 2: Portraits, 1924 – 1937 | src Sotheby’s

Nancy Cunard & surrealist friends

Man Ray ~ Nancy Cunard and Tristan Tzara at the costume ball of count de Beaumont, 1924 | src flickr
Man Ray ~ Nancy Cunard and Tristan Tzara at the costume ball of count de Beaumont, 1924
Curtis Moffat (1887-1949) ~ Nancy Cunard and Louis Aragon, 1926 | src lefigaro

 

vintage smokers in 1910s

Portrait de femme fumant une cigarette, France, vers 1910. | Portrait of a woman smoking a cigarette, France, ca. 1910 | src galerie lumière des roses ~ Les beaux chapeaux
English actress Gertie Millar, ca. 1906. (Photo by Paul Popper / Popperfoto) | src getty images