Tag: gorilla

L’Amour ~ Love, 1935

William H. Mortensen :: L’Amour | Love, 1935. Manipulated photograph. An image from American Grotesque: the Life and Art of William Mortensen, published by Feral House. “Mortensen’s methods often made it hard to distinguish whether the results were photographs or not. He used traditional printmaking techniques, such as bromoiling, and developed many of his own. He would create composite images, scratch, scrape and draw on his prints, then apply a texture that made them look like etchings, thereby disguising his manipulations. Consequently, every print was unique.” quoted from source The Guardian
William H. Mortensen :: L’Amour | Love, 1935. Manipulated photograph. | src cargo collective | more [+] by this photographer

Here, Helen (Marlene Dietrich) as

Blonde Venus

in the truly freaky and berserk “Hot Voodoo” dance. It plays like a pagan, taboo and primitive beauty and the beast-style ritual, with Dietrich as an albino goddess or priestess shedding her gorilla fur disguise.  All these decades later “Hot Voodoo” is still deliriously weird, and perhaps the first incidence of deliberate, knowing camp in popular culture. (It’s easy to imagine von Sternberg and Dietrich looking at each other across the camera and thinking, “Can you believe we’re getting away with this?”), 1932 / src: reflections-on-blonde-venus

more [+] Marlene Dietrich posts / more [+] Blonde Venus posts