The show takes its cue from a quote from Arnold: “I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.” Set across three rambling floors of a Georgian townhouse and coaching annexe in the self-consciously picturesque Sussex town of Petworth, it uses the space well to tell the episodic story of a pioneering photographer. A famous studio back shot of Monroe, coquettishly clutching a sheet to her naked body, is likewise mirrored by an apparently impromptu snap of her fixing her hair in a grotty airport washroom, with her dress bunched up around her waist. The composition of the two pictures – taken 10 years apart – is so strikingly similar that they could not have been coincidental: both women are captured at their most vulnerable, slightly off balance, with suspender belts dangling limply over their buttocks as they haul their clothing into place both are preparing to step out as queens. The Redgrave picture echoes one from the start of Arnold’s career, when she subverted a student assignment to shoot a fashion show into a study of a previously undocumented Harlem scene, where black women in skin-whitening makeup modelled homemade frocks. It was about image construction as a necessity of survival among her predominantly female subjects. Photograph: Eve Arnold Estateįor all that she became the photographer of choice for many stars, Arnold’s portraiture was never just about celebrity. Striking similarities with the Vanessa Redgrave image … behind the scenes at a fashion show in Harlem, 1950.
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