That Floozy In The Tub
Sunday, October 19, 2014
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| Alexandra Waterhouse-Hayward 1989 |
In recent times one of
the most famous of women has been Frida Kahlo. But there are others of note
that somehow have been overlooked. It is interesting that three of them were magnificent
photographers. One, Tina Modotti was expelled from Mexico for being a Communist. She
did not leave without giving her 4x5 view camera (which had been a gift from
her friend Edward Weston for whom she had posed in the nude) to a noted
Mexican-photographer-to-be Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Another was Margaret Bourke-White
who was a WWII photographer and the first woman in a bombing run over Germany.
A third is only now
being discovered. She is Lee Miller who appeared in many avant-garde films of
the 30s and was a model and assistant to Man Ray. Like Bourke-White she was
also a photographer on the European front in WWII.
Imagine my surprise to
have found in a pristine condition, this book on Lee Miller, originally
published in 1985, but this one reprinted in 1999. I found the book in the
reject book cart at my Oakridge Public Library. I paid $1.50.
Of interest to me was
a stereo photograph of Lee Miller taken by her father Theodore Miller when she
was 21. It is a full-frontal nude that I will not place here and just leave it
to your imagination that Miller was one of the most beautiful women to have
ever been photographed by Steichen and his kind. The double photograph was
taken 1 July 1928 in Kingwood Park, Poughkeepsie,
New York.
In 1989 I embarked on
a project to photograph about 16 women, one at a time, in a tub. I shot the
pictures with my medium format camera shooting down on the tub. The tub in
question, in my basement had a ledge so that I was able to lodge my tripod. I
used the same lens and film and light setup. This project ultimately became one
of my better known gallery shows.
Halfway through the
project, one weekend, my wife asked me, “What floozy is posing for you today?” I could not resist saying, “It is a floozy
you know very well. It is our daughter Ale.”
During my tub picture
taking my 21-year-old daughter asked to be part of the series. I found her
request uncomfortable but she insisted. On the day of the pictures I asked
another of my subjects (about Ale’s age) to come so that the two would assist
each other and make it less of an issue for me.
