De Meyer at Vogue: Commercializing Queer Affect ... - Elspeth Brown

Photography& CultureVolume 2—Issue 3November 2009pp. 253–274DOI:10.2752/175145109X12532077132275Reprints available directlyfrom the publishersPhotocopying permitted bylicence only© Berg 2009De Meyer at Vogue:CommercializingQueer Affect in FirstWorld War-era FashionPhotographyElspeth H. BrownElspeth H. Brown is an associate professor of History, andDirector of the Centre for the Study of the United States, atthe University of Toronto. She is the author of The CorporateEye: Photography and the Rationalization of American CommercialCulture, 1884–1929 (Johns Hopkins 2005) and co-editor ofCultures of Commerce: Representation and American BusinessCulture, 1877–1960 (Palgrave, 2006). Her current researchis an analysis of the commercial modeling industry in thetwentieth-century United States, exploring the relationshipamong visuality, identity formation, and the commodificationof the self in modern American history and culture.AbstractThis article analyzes the work of Baron Adolph deMeyer, a pictorialist whose work revolutionized fashionphotography at Vogue between 1913 and 1922. After abrief discussion of de Meyer’s life and work in Europebefore emigrating to New York City in 1914, the essaydraws on recent scholarship on “public feelings” toinvestigate the queer context of de Meyer’s photographicwork for US Vogue in the years surrounding the FirstWorld War. The essay argues that de Meyer brought toVogue a specific Edwardian structure of feeling definedby a revolt against the rationality of the second industrialrevolution and informed by a transatlantic aestheticmovement that privileged emotional life and expression.De Meyer brought together the aesthetic movementwith a queer transatlantic counterculture whose style,borrowing from José Muñoz, can be characterized by“affective excess.” De Meyer’s collaborator in severalof the Vogue essays was the mannequin and ZiegfeldPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

254 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. Brownmodel-showgirl Dolores, whocomplemented de Meyer’s campexcessiveness with her signature laconicperformance of white affect. In the contextof US race politics and commercialculture in the First World War era, deMeyer’s queer aesthetic was also a racialproject that played a central role in thecommercialization of aesthetic feeling.Keywords: photography, queer, BaronAdolph de Meyer, fashion, VogueCecil Beaton, the British photographerand designer, held Baron Adolph (Gayne)de Meyer in very high regard. Referring tode Meyer as the “Debussy of the camera,”Beaton argued in 1975 that de Meyerhad “not been placed high enough in thehierarchy of photographers.” Fair enough.It’s Beaton’s next observation, however, thatcaptivates: “Few have had greater influenceon the picture-making of today than thissomewhat affected but true artist” (Beatonand Buckland 1975: 106). Here, in twosentences, Beaton brings together feeling(Debussy) and affect—but in the pejorativesense, as in “affected,” a flamboyant conditionassociated with superficiality and artifice.If twentieth-century normative masculinityhas been constructed in relationship todiscourses of naturalness and authenticity,the lack of feminine artifice and masquerade,then the “affected” male is the effeminatemale: in other words, the fairy (Rivière 1984[1929]; Chauncey 1994; Howard 1999).Beaton, queer himself, was sympatheticto de Meyer’s dilemma. In a period whenmanly modernists of both the male andfemale persuasion redefined the aestheticsof photography away from the gushinessof (girlish) feelings to the photographer’s(manly) eye, Beaton had to work hard toplace the terms “affected” and “true” in thesame sentence to describe an artist whohad been one of the most influential ofpictorialists, and who definitively reshapedthe visual vocabulary of modern fashionphotography. 1De Meyer’s photographic work wasshaped by both an aesthetic movementvocabulary that privileged feeling overrationality as well as a queer sensibilitycharacterized by what José Esteban Muñozhas called “affective excess” (Muñoz 2000).This article draws on recent scholarship on“public feelings” to investigate the queercontext of de Meyer’s photographic work forUS Vogue in the years surrounding the FirstWorld War. Scholarship on public feelingshas been described by Ann Cvetkovichas a “stealth feminist project” designed to“reimagine political life and collectivity” in“implicitly queer” ways. The work gatheredtogether within the public feelings rubricseeks to understand the relationshipbetween political identities and “structures offeeling, sensibilities, everyday forms of culturalexpression and affiliation” (Cvetkovich 2007:461). Affect, for this vein of scholarship,emerges generally as a synonym for bothemotion or mood, and as the expression ofthat emotion; in José Muñoz’s work especially,affect is what the Oxford English Dictionary(OED) defines as “the outward display ofemotion or mood, as manifested by facialexpression, posture, gestures, tone of voice.”In this article, I will join this interpretivecommunity by historicizing de Meyer’sfashion photography as a queer performanceof racialized affect that played a brief yetPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 255pivotal historical role in tying aesthetic feelingto commodity fetishism.Pictorialism’s Aesthetic FeelingsDe Meyer invented his own history, includinghis name, as assiduously as he inventedhimself. As a result, it is difficult to verifymost aspects of his life, especially since hedestroyed most of his own work in the late1930s (“all that was superfluous … all myphotographic work, especially”). 2 He wasborn around 1868, probably in Paris, thoughhe spent some of his childhood in Dresden;in most accounts, his mother was Scottishand his father German. He was half-Jewish,German, and homosexual in a periodmarked by anti-homosexual and anti-Jewishpanic, emblematized by the Dreyfus affair(1894) and the Wilde trial (1895). Theseaspects of his identity produced a namechange (from von Meyer to de Meyer), amariage blanc in the wake of the Wilde trial,and two migrations to the United States onthe eve of the two world wars. Although deMeyer spent his early years in Paris, he waseducated in Germany in the 1880s. AlfredStieglitz, with whom de Meyer was to havea lifelong correspondence, studied in Berlinbetween 1881 and 1890; both Stieglitz andde Meyer were influenced by the emergenceof amateur photography during these years,especially the 1889 “Photographic JubileeExhibition” in Berlin, and the 1891 Viennasecessionist exhibition, “Artistic Photography.”Though we have no record of de Meyer’sspecific entrée into the emerging movementfor artistic photography, his photographicwork was included in most of the majorinternational photography exhibitionsbetween 1894 and 1912 in London, NewYork, Paris, Brussels, and Turin. The LinkedRing Brotherhood, the international photosecessionistgroup founded in London in1892, accepted de Meyer for membership inthe early 1898; he remained a member until1910.De Meyer moved to London around1895, at the height of the aestheticmovement. An aesthete himself, withenough family money to shield him fromthe business of making a living, de Meyerquickly placed himself in the orbit of theera’s fashionable circles, a newly-emergedcombination of wealth and aestheticsensibility that entertained and financed thecreative group surrounding the future kingof England, Prince Albert Edward, the Princeof Wales. In 1896 or so, de Meyer methis future bride, the queer fellow-travelerOlga Alberta Caracciola. A beautiful youngwoman raised in Normandy’s fashionableseaside resort, Dieppe, Olga had modeledfor numerous artists who made the yearlypilgrimage to Dieppe, including JamesMcNeill Whistler, who painted her in 1885.It has been suggested that Olga was themodel for Henry James’s 1897 novel WhatMaisie Knew, as James, in describing Dieppeas a “reduced Florence” with “every typeof character for a novelist,” remarked “thatenchanting Olga learnt more at Dieppe thanmy Maisie knew” (Ehrenkranz 1994: 21).More importantly for both of them, however,was Olga’s relationship to the Prince ofWales, who became King Edward VII in 1901.Edward was certainly Olga’s godfather, andpossibly her biological father as well (Olga’smother, the Duchesse de Caracciola, wasunmarried). The Prince of Wales played animportant role in Olga’s life, including giftinga villa to Olga and her mother, where theylived in Dieppe. Olga and Adolph made aPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

256 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. Brownperfect platonic pair: glamorous aesthetesand lavish entertainers; catty insiders dubbedthem “Pédéraste and Médisante” (Seebohm1982: 194). 3 In some accounts, de Meyerbecame “Baron” de Meyer in 1901, when thePrince of Wales asked his cousin, the King ofSaxony, to confer the title so that Adolph andOlga might attend King Edward’s coronationat Westminster Abbey (Harker 1979: 157).During the first decade of the century,with the Prince of Wales now King EdwardVII, de Meyer committed himself to twopassions: the social and creative whirlwindof the international smart set and aesthetic(or later, pictorialist) photography. A closefriend and patron was Constance Gladys,Lady de Gray, a wealthy and powerful patronof the arts, who brought together, in hersalons and social occasions, the royal familyand the period’s dancers and artists (Nijinksy,Whistler, Wilde, Beardsley). Between 1901and 1910, the years of Edward VII’s reign,the de Meyers enjoyed a privileged placein elite Edwardian circles; they entertainedextravagantly at their home in London’sCadogan Gardens, bringing together artists,dancers, and actors with wealthy patronsand art-loving members of the aristocracy.They entertained as well at the PalazzoBalbi-Valier, the villa on Venice’s Grand Canal,which they rented each summer; Americanphotographers Gertrude Käsebier andFrances Benjamin Johnston, for example,visited the de Meyers there in the summer of1905 (Ehrenkrantz 1994).De Meyer’s second passion during thesepre-war years was the aesthetic movementin photography. Pictorialism, a popularmovement in photography from the early1890s through the First World War, builtupon nineteenth-century English models inarguing for the creative possibilities of thecamera. Pictorialism emphasized feelings,emotions, and sentiment over the tyrannyof fact, long presumed to be the camera’ssingular contribution to representation.The movement is often understood asthe effort to elevate photography to thestatus of fine art, and, in both subject matterand formal strategies, many pictorialistsdid indeed emulate the effects of latenineteenth-century European painters. Asa definition of artistic seeing entailed theability of the artists to select certain detailsfor creative expression at the expense ofothers, pictorialist photographers neededto disrupt the camera’s utilitarian leanings.Unlike mechanical or scientific photographs,aesthetic photographs required differentmeans towards different ends (Doty 1978;Homer 1983; Peterson 1992; Bochner 2005).As the American critic C.H. Caffin argued in1901, the aesthetic photograph “will recordfacts, but not as facts; it will even ignorefacts if they interfere with the conceptionthat is kept in view; just as Corot in hispaintings certainly recorded the phenomenaof morning and twilight skies and just ascertainly left out a number of facts as hesat before the scene, his object being notto get at facts, but to express the emotionswith which the facts affected him” (Caffin1972 [1901]: 10; see also Louis 1906: 74–76and Stieglitz 1904: 41–44). The pictorialistphotographer sought emotional expression,rather than indexical verisimilitude; thecamera, like the brush, was to be consideredas yet another tool towards aestheticends (Brown 2005: 187–188). De Meyer’sphotographs, like those of other pictorialists,refined a discourse of aesthetic feeling thatemphasized beauty, symbolism, and thePhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 257natural world, defined especially in Stieglitz’scircle against commerce and the logic ofmass production.Between 1903 and the 1913, whenthe first society portrait by de Meyerappeared in Vogue, de Meyer developedthe aesthetic approach that transformedfashion photography. He deepened hisrelationship with leading photographers,especially Alfred Stieglitz and GertrudeKäsebier, who played a central role in deMeyer’s artistic development (Ehrenkranz1994). As did other pictorialists, de Meyerfocused on light, tonal gradations, anddifferential focus as a means of conveying theemotional tone of the aesthetic photograph.He began backlighting his sitters, using lightto define the line of a jaw, a halo of unrulyhair. He pioneered the use of artificial light,employing floodlights, reflectors, mirrors, andthe low flash as techniques for achieving hisatmospheric interior portraits and still-lifestudies. (When Steichen replaced de Meyeras Condé Nast’s chief staff photographerin 1922, he had only worked with naturallight, and was initially overwhelmed by theelaborate equipment that staff assistantJames McKeon made available to him (Niven1997: 513).) During this period de Meyeralso acquired a Pinkerton-Smith lens, whichallowed him to focus clearly on the centerof the image, while the edges of the piecedissolved in a luminous glow (Hoffman 2007:395–96; Hall-Duncan 1979: 35). Eventually,to intensify the luminosity of his imagesstill further, de Meyer stretched gauze orlace across the lens in the effort to disruptthe camera’s indexicality. Through thesepictorialist techniques, de Meyer pushedthe camera image towards the connotativemeanings of the aesthetic movement inphotography: beauty, metaphor, symbolism,and emotional intensity. These techniques ofproducing aesthetic feeling became centrallyimportant for his fashion photography atVogue after 1913.The period between 1910 and the startof the war in 1914 signaled major shifts inboth aesthetics and politics which eventuallybrought the de Meyers to New York in1914. Stieglitz’s 1910 international exhibitionof pictorialist photography at the AlbrightArt Gallery, in Buffalo New York, whichincluded de Meyer’s work, ironically signaledthe waning of pictorialism as an aestheticmovement, even though Stieglitz continuedto favor de Meyer’s work. (In 1911–12, deMeyer was the only photographer thatStieglitz showed at his Gallery of the Photo-Secession.) More importantly for the deMeyers’ standard of living, however, theirpatron, King Edward VII, died in 1910. For atime, the de Meyers traveled with the BalletRusses until 1912, when according to at leastone source Olga’s amorous relationship withthe lesbian arts patron, wealthy Singer sewingmachine heiress Princesse de Polignac (néeWinnaretta Singer), caused the de Meyersto leave Venice for Constantinople, thenTangier. According to Philippe Julian, the deMeyers “were among the first to colonizethe little town, which has since becomea suburb of Sodom” (Julian 1976: 33). DeMeyer’s luxuriously queer album of Nijinsky’sperformance in Prelude à l’Apres-Midi d’uneFaune left the printer on August 15, 1914, inthe first month of the First World War. Livingback in London when war broke out, Olgaand Adolph immediately became the focus ofrumors that they were both German spies:how else to explain their mysterious wealthand their numerous travels? ConvincedPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

258 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. Brownby their friends and supporters, Olga andAdolph departed for New York with theirfriends the Speyers, wealthy LondonbasedGerman-Jewish bankers who foundthemselves in a similar predicament. The deMeyers arrived in New York in 1914 withexcellent connections, but no money orpatrons (Julian 1976: 36).De Meyer at VogueThe de Meyers’ arrival in New York coincidedwith the ascendancy of Condé Nast’smagazine Vogue as the arbiter of Americanfashion, taste, and style. Condé Nast, aMidwest-born advertising manager for thepopular magazine Collier’s Weekly, boughtVogue in 1909. Founded in 1892, Voguehad been a minor society gazette with acirculation of less than 14,000, overshadowedby the numerous more successful magazines,such as the Ladies Home Journal and TheDelineator, both of which also coveredfashion but boasted circulation of over onemillion. Nast avoided the mass audiencemade possible by the “ten cent magazinerevolution” of the 1890s: with Vogue, heexplicitly sought to create an elite “class”magazine for American tastemakers, fundedby advertising dollars from the nation’s mostexclusive retailers. Of modest backgroundhimself, Nast’s 1902 marriage to ClarisseCoudert, whose family was part of NewYork’s Four Hundred, guaranteed thenecessary elite access. [Nast’s name, as wellas those of three relations, was published inthe Social Register for the first time in 1902(Seebohm 1982). 4 ]By 1911, two years before de Meyer’sfirst photograph was published in Vogue,the new magazine had taken shape. Likeits predecessor, it was designed as ahandbook for the elite social life of theEdwardian bourgeoisie, covering mostlyfashion (including patterns) and societynews (weddings, summer resorts, charityevents). Specifically, Nast saw the magazineas the “technical advisor … to the womanof fashion in the matter of her clothes andher personal adornment” (Seebohm 1982:76; Chase and Chase 1954). He increasedthe magazine price from ten to fifteen cents,and reduced its publication schedule fromweekly to bi-monthly. New advertising, atexorbitant rates of US$10 per thousandreaders, pushed each issue’s page count fromthe formerly modest thirty pages to over100; color found its way to each lushly drawncover.Fashion photography, as we might callit today, appeared in two guises in theseearly years: via Vogue’s “society portraits”and through the fashion essay. Each numbercarried a “society frontispiece” by a portraitphotographer; by 1917, each issue carriedseveral such full-page portraits, spreadthroughout the issue. In the early ’teens, theportraits were generally straight-forwarddescriptions of their well-known society, film,and theatre subjects, made by establishedcommercial and theatre photographerssuch as Aimé Dupont, Ira L. Hill, and CurtisBell. Very quickly, however, Vogue’s societyportraits were also being made by NewYork’s leading aesthetic photographers, mostfrequently Arnold Genthe and GertrudeKäsebier, as well as E.O. Hoppé. In theJanuary 15, 1913 issue, de Meyer’s firstphotograph appeared in Vogue, a full-pageportrait of Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney (Figure1). Also known as Gertrude VanderbiltWhitney, de Meyer’s subject was an artpatron, philanthropist and sculptor whoPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 259Fig 1 Portrait of Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney,Vogue January 15, 1913, p. 16. Photography byBaron Adolph de Meyer, Text by staff, © CondéNast Publications; scan courtesy of Toronto PublicLibrary.founded the Whitney Studio Club in 1918,which became the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art in 1931.De Meyer’s portrait perfectly connotesthe social, economic, and aesthetic longingsof Vogue’s implied readership. The slenderWhitney stands imperially before the cameraat a slightly oblique angle, her left handresting lightly on her hip, while her right armanchors her body to the indistinct studiofurniture behind her. With her chin up,Whitney looks down her nose at the cameraand the viewer, suggesting the elite classposition that her last name confirms. At thesame time, the gorgeous exoticism of hergown suggests a bohemian modernism, theartist’s interest in overturning convention.As William Leach has argued of this period,orientalist discourse worked to sanction thepermissiveness of an emerging consumerculture (Leach 1993). Some viewers mayhave recognized the gown as the workof Leon Bakst, the Russian Jewish artistand stage designer who also designed thecostumes for the Ballet Russes. A structuringband of vertical light encourages the eye tolook the subject up and down, even whileshe looks down at us; de Meyer’s lighting,as well as his Pinkerton-Smith lens, focusthe viewer’s eye on the gown’s shimmeringwhites and the necklace’s three loops ofpearl. The image is stunningly beautiful, andin the context of Vogue’s other pre-warportraits, is idiosyncratic in its sophisticateduse of lighting, composition, and tonalgradation. Through this portrait, de Meyerintroduces the two threads that becamecentral to his later work for Vogue: theaesthetic feeling of pictorialist photographywith the discourse of money—here signifiedmost explicitly through Whitney’s pearls, theportrait’s literal focal point.The second way that fashion photographyappeared in the new Vogue was throughthe fashion essay: a series of fashion images,anchored to captions and an accompanyingtext, which described a specific fashiontheme (the season’s hats, for example, orgowns by a specific couturier). Some scholarshave argued that de Meyer “invented” thefashion essay, but this is not the case: Voguehad been publishing multiple-page spreadsof fashion photography for years before dePhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

260 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. BrownMeyer’s first effort appeared in the May 1,1917 issue. Initially, Condé Nast would gethis illustrations from the apparel house, suchas Joseph, Bonwit Teller, John Wanamaker,or Abercrombie & Fitch. Photographsdepicting the newest “models” in cloaks andgowns were presented alongside pen-andinkillustrations from the apparel house;the mannequin wearing the clothing itemswas not identified, unless she was a societywoman or otherwise well known to themagazine’s readers. As photography beganto push out the pen-and-ink illustrations inthe mid-teens, however, Condé Nast beganusing the theatre and celebrity photographerIra L. Hill to produce multi-page fashionspreads. Although none of the secondaryliterature on de Meyer or Nast mentions Hill,it is clear from paging through these prewarissues of Vogue that it was Hill, not deMeyer, who was either Nast’s first paid staffphotographer or who was under contract toNast.Secondary literature on de Meyer hasconsistently made two errors that are notborne out by the pages of Vogue: the firstis that there were no fashion photographyessays in Vogue before de Meyer’s arrival,and the second is that Nast hired de Meyeron an exclusive contract as the magazine’sfirst paid staff photographer in 1913. 5 Frommy reading of the magazine’s numbers fromthe First World War era, however, I wouldargue that while de Meyer’s work did appearbefore 1917, it was not until the Spring ofthat year that his work begins to dominatethe magazine, in both genres of societyportraits and fashion essays. By 1917, deMeyer quite likely was enjoying a contract asthe magazine’s staff photographer, a positionhe was to hold until 1922, when he left forVogue’s competitor Harper’s Bazaar andwas replaced at Vogue by Edward Steichen(Chase and Chase 1954). Once de Meyer’swork appeared in the format of the fashionessay in the May 1, 1917 issue, Hill’s workin this genre disappears from the magazine,suggesting a contractual shift from Hill to deMeyer.A comparison between Hill’s fashionessays and de Meyer’s suggests why Nastmade the shift away from Hill to de Meyer.Hill’s images, while more than competent,are straightforward in their attention todetail; unlike the pictorialists, Hill didn’texperiment with the lighting, focusing,and printing techniques that signified theaesthetic movement. In a January 1, 1917photo essay concerning three Jacqueline teagowns,for example, a mannequin appearsin profile against a black background, smilinghistrionically into a hand-held mirror; theposing, uniform lighting, and attention todetail suggest contemporary theatre, filmand celebrity portraits, not the emotionalexpressiveness of aesthetic photography.In contrast, de Meyer introduced all thevisual techniques of the art movementin photography to his work at Vogue. Hisfirst fashion essay, on May 1, 1917, was atwo-page spread featuring bridal lace andincluded a full-length image of actress JeanneEagels, in the rhetoric of the society portrait;a small still-life of lace, candles, and a fan; anda stunning image of a young film actress, VeraBeresford (daughter of actress Kitty Gordon),modeling a bridal veil of white tulle boundby a wreath of orange blossoms. De Meyerlit Beresford from below; the camera picksup illuminated details of orange petals anddelicate lips while casting dramatic shadows(later critics would say, “melodramatic”)Photography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 261against the wainscoting above. With theseimages, de Meyer announced a technicalvirtuosity in photographing transparent andopaque materials while bringing to the workall the mystery and aesthetic feeling of artphotography.De Meyer’s Queer Affective ExcessDe Meyer brought to Vogue a specificEdwardian “structure of feeling” defined bya revolt against the rationality of the secondindustrial revolution, and an oppositionalcelebration of aesthetic feeling. RaymondWilliams used the term “structure of feeling”in an effort to link a culture’s documentaryexpressions (“from poems to buildings todress-fashions”) to “all the elements in thegeneral organization,” what he has describedas a culture’s “whole way of life” (Williams1961: 48–49). Pictorialist photographyjoined with other cultural documents,including Debussy’s music, Nijinsky’sdancing, and Whistler’s painting to create anoppositional culture that valorized feelingand emotion over rationality and system,the era’s dominant culture. But there isanother aspect of this transatlantic aestheticculture that bears mentioning: its queerness.Borrowing from Williams once again, thisculture’s documentary expressions (AubreyBeardsley’s drawings, F. Holland Day’sphotographs) are constituent of a whole wayof queer life for a transatlantic counterculturethat saw its aesthetic vocabulary andemphasis on feeling emerge as a dominantcultural formation during the Edwardianera, before becoming a residual formationduring the modernist period following theFirst World War. De Meyer was at the centreof these queer cosmopolitan circles onboth sides of the Atlantic, and his aestheticcontributions played an important role in thetransition of modernism in American fashionphotography.How might we understand the aestheticsof queer feeling during this transitionalperiod, as the aesthetic movement gave wayto modernism’s clean lines and discipliningeye? Borrowing from José Esteban Muñoz’swork on “feeling brown,” I’d like to suggestthat de Meyer’s Vogue aesthetic is markedby an “affective excess” that can be seen inthe profusion of objects, textures, fabrics,and flowers that provide his work with hissignature style. In his work on contemporaryLatino/a performance, Muñoz describes anormative public sphere defined througha subdued performance of whiteness thatcan be characterized, essentially, as withoutaffect. What unites non-normative groups,in Muñoz’s analysis, “is not simply the fact ofidentity but the way in which they performaffect, especially in relation to the ‘nationalaffect’ that is aligned with a hegemonic class”(Muñoz 2000: 68). Specifically, in Muñoz’sanalysis, Latino/a affect reads as “over thetop and excessive,” a performance of ethnicself that is seen as “inappropriate” fromthe perspective of the white middle-classsubjectivity that dominates what he callsthe national affect. While Muñoz doesn’texplicitly extend his analysis in this essay toqueer non-Latino/a subcultural styles, hisidentification of “affective excess” as themarker of the non-normative is useful inunderstanding de Meyer’s “over the top andexcessive” aesthetic.Baron Adolph de Meyer was both“excessive” and “affected” (to borrow fromCecil Beaton) in both his personal life andin his photographic work. Worldly, cultured,and multi-lingual, de Meyer was a part of thePhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

262 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. Brown(effeminate) male aesthete circle in NewYork that included Carl Van Vechten andother creative artists. In a recent article,art historian Cecile Whiting provides asevidence Florine Stettheimer’s 1923 oilportrait of her friend de Meyer, an intimatein this effete circle of queer artists anddecorators. Stettheimer’s portrait representsan effeminate dandy figure: standing in frontof his camera and tripod, draped with thelace through which de Meyer made manyof his images, de Meyer gazes to one side,his lips delicately pursed, his arms girlishlyakimbo on his slender-yet-accentuatedhips (Whiting 2000). De Meyer not onlyphotographed the decorative works of hisfriends, he himself also, after 1916, wrotearticles on decoration and entertaining,accompanied by his own table settingsand flower arrangements (which hephotographed for Vogue). As one of theearlier examples, in Vogue’s August 1, 1917“interior decorations” number de Meyer iscredited as “decorator” for several interiors,including the dining room at Mrs. Miles B.Carpenter’s house in Bar Harbor, Maine,and one of his own rooms at his New Yorkresidence, “Gayne House.” His decoratingaesthetic is eclectic and Victorian in itscompulsive accumulation of objects (onecaption describing a room at Gayne House,in fact, suggests that he had “indulged tothe full his hobby of Victorianism”); his workcontrasts with his queer contemporary, Elsiede Wolfe, whose interiors for the ColonyClub signaled a more modern, restrainedstyle that prefigured moderism’s aversionto “decoration” (Marra 1994, 1998). 6 DeMeyer’s fashion and design journalismflourished once he moved to Harper’s Bazaar(and Paris) after 1922, where his writingemphasized the newest trends in Europeantaste (de Meyer 1922).Around this time, both de Meyers visitedan astrologer for spiritual guidance, who gavethem new names: Olga changed her nameto “Mhahra” (a place name for a region nowin Yemen) and Adolph changed his name to“Gayne.” Even in the height of transatlanticorientalism, changing one’s name mightbe considered a bit “excessive,” at leastoutside of fairy circles where name changeswere more common. De Meyer soon hadestablished a shop at his home, GayneHouse, an “elaborately decorated townhouse at 59 East 52nd Street in New York,filled with antique European furniture, glass,silver, and tapestries” (many of de Meyer’sphotographs were taken at Gayne House,and it is possible to detect his interiors inthese images). 7 As if photographing forVogue, designing interiors in Maine, Floridaand New York, and keeping a shop wereinsufficient creative outlets, de Meyer begandesigning his own clothes in 1918. The July15, 1918 issue of Vogue published a two-pagespread of his designs, announcing that “a newdesigner has been added to New York’s list:at Gayne House Baron de Meyer has createda charming collection of Models for Autumn”(Vogue 1918).As George Chauncey has shown, in thepre-war years it was gender, not sexualobject choice, which defined contemporaryqueer cultures. In using the term “queer,”then, I am both seeking to destabilizethe fixity of categories in the vein ofcontemporary queer scholarship but also,importantly, using the term in its historicallyspecific meaning (Somerville 2000: 6). Bythe 1910s and 1920s, men in New York Citywho identified themselves on the basis ofPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 263their homosexual object choices, rather thanan effeminate gender style, usually calledthemselves “queer,” reserving the terms“pansy” or “fairy” to describe womanly menwhose sub-cultural style of “affective excess”became known as “camp” as early as 1909,as in “ostentatious, exaggerated, affected,theatrical; effeminate or homosexual”(Chauncey 1994: 16; OED online). Thefundamental division of male sexual actorswas not between “heterosexual” and“homosexual” men, then, but betweentwo types of men: the gender-normative“normals,” and the gender-queer (effeminate)males, known as fairies. The fairy, in otherwords, represented a gender inversion, morethan a sexual identity; as Chauncey argues,the bisexual was not a person who sleptwith both men and women (as we mightthink of both de Meyers today, perhaps),but was someone who “was both male andfemale” (Chauncey 1994: 49).De Meyer’s camp theatricality, whilequeer in a broad sense, especially bycontemporary usage, was historically morespecifically a part of New York’s fairy cultureof the First World War era. The flamboyantpublic styles during the era of the NYC fairywere signified most consistently throughreferences to flowers (references to pansies,daisies and buttercups were condensed inthe code “horticultural lads”); the adoptionof faux titles (the Duchess of Marlboro,Baron de Meyer); and feminine nicknames,often inspired by contemporary feminineicons (Salomé, for example, popularizedby the many adaptations of Oscar Wilde’sscandalous 1892 play). Baron de Meyer, anoriginal horticultural lad, already had thetitle, which although always disputed, seemsto have been accepted by his social circleand by Vogue. With the adoption of a newname, Gayne, de Meyer enacted (perhapscoincidentally, to be sure) a pervasivecultural ritual central to the fairy culture ofthe First World War era. The name wasan inspired choice: the word “gay,” whichbegins the name was, as Chauncey shows, acontemporary code word that signified “theflamboyance in dress and speech associatedwith the fairies” (Chauncey 1994: 17). Thename, an unusual but not-unheard-of boy’sname in this period, takes its meaning from“gain” or “to get”—an interpretation thatresonates with de Meyer’s central role inaestheticizing the commodity form in hisVogue work. As this brief discussion of fairyculture suggests, one of its defining attributeswas the public display of flamboyant style indress, speech, mannerisms, and expressions:the “affective excess” of camp performativity.De Meyer’s camp affective excess canbe clearly seen in his photographic work forVogue. In these technically brilliant images,de Meyer lovingly delineates each flowerpetal, bridal jewel, and trailing ribbon. Hiswork is exceptional in large part becauseof his success in using his innovative lightingtechniques to illuminate the materialobjects—lace, tulle, crystal—that otherphotographers, such as Hill, had been unableto bring alive through the camera. DeMeyer’s brilliance in animating the materialgoods of luxury commodity culture made hiswork indispensable to Nast, whose growingmagazine empire depended upon thesupport of luxury retailers such as Cartier.Performing White Affect:Dolores as MannequinDe Meyer’s expressionless collaborator insome of the most spectacular fashion essaysPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

264 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. Brownwas the British mannequin Dolores (néeKathleen Rose). Dolores was a working-classLondoner who had been transformed intoone of the first Anglo-American mannequinsby the British couturier, Lady Duff Gordon(business name, Lucile, Ltd.). When Lucileopened a Fifth Avenue salon in 1910, fourof her mannequins were sent to NewYork along with Lucile’s signature dresses:internationally famous “gowns of emotion”representing “love and hate, joy and sorrow,life and death” (New York Times 1910; DuffGordon 1932; Etherington-Smith and Pilcher1986). Lucile was the first Anglo-Americanclothing designer to present her work onwhat was known then as the “living model;”her mannequin parades became a sensationin New York, and helped spark the mid-teensfashion show craze in department storesand charity events, such as Vogue’s 1914fashion fête (Brown 2009). By 1918, when deMeyer first photographed her, Dolores hadmoved from Lucile’s showroom to becomeone of the very first “model-showgirls” inthe Ziegfeld Follies, for which Lucile oftendesigned the costumes (Schweitzer 2009).In other words, Dolores was the firstcelebrity clothes model: famous not forsinging and dancing (she did neither), but formodeling high-end designs on stages, bothon Fifth Avenue (couture) and Broadway(musical revues). Dolores’s carefully honedperformance of white affect—on stage andin the photographer’s studio—functionedas the “straight man” for de Meyer’sphotographic excessiveness, where luxurygoods took center stage.De Meyer photographed both Lucilegowns and Dolores numerous times in thisperiod, but I will focus here on one of sevenpages in an April 15, 1919 Vogue fashionessay entitled “Pearls and Tulle Spin BridalWitcheries.” The article featured fourteen deMeyer photographs of bridal gowns (somealso designed by de Meyer) and accessories,including “lustrous jewels” and a “silvernet embroidered delicately with pearls”(Vogue 1919). The second page of thespread (Figure 2) joins a portrait of Doloresmodeling a de Meyer gown with threesmaller still-lives of the bride’s accessories.These accessories—a diamond barrette, forexample, or an amber-handled white ostrichfeather fan, both provided by Cartier—are,according to a caption, “almost as necessaryto a wedding as the bride herself” (surelyan understatement from the perspective ofCartier). De Meyer’s arrangement of theseaccessories is effusive yet studied: in eachcorner image, a satin slipper unsuccessfullycompetes for the viewer’s attention,drowned out by a cacophonous profusionof cut flowers, lace, feathers, garlands,jewelry and fruit blossoms. Yet his brilliantlighting, emanating from behind and belowthe central arrangement, and complementedby smaller lights that selectively illuminatepearls and diamonds, successfully draws theeye. Here, de Meyer’s decorative excessperfectly complements the conspicuousconsumption of a nouveau riche leisure class(Veblen 1899).Dominating the page spread, however,Dolores models a platinum-and-diamondMercury headdress and a gown of silvercloth. De Meyer’s lighting (from behind andbelow the model), as well as the Mercurywings, leads the viewer to Dolores’s face,especially her piercing gaze. She stares backat the viewer with supreme affectlessness,her blank expression creating a somewhatintimidating canvas for de Meyer’sPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 265Fig 2 “Pearls and Tulle SpinBridal Witcheries,” Vogue, April15, 1919, p. 44. Baron Adolphde Meyer, photographer anddesigner; Dolores (KathleenRose), model. Text by staff, ©Condé Nast Publications; scancourtesy of Toronto PublicLibrary.accessorizing. This lack of expression was, infact, one of Dolores’s defining performancesboth on the stage and in her photographicmodeling; her style of blank hauteur marksnot only all her work for de Meyer, but also,I would argue, became the template forfashion models more generally. The otherperformance, central to her work as a modeland more difficult to signify through stillphotography, was her walk: the studied stepsof the couturier model, made famous after1917 on Ziegfeld’s stage.Dolores’s affectless performance as thefirst famous couturier model was well knownto Vogue readers. As I discuss elsewhere, itwas Dolores’s laconic expressions, gesturesand movements, choreographed first by LadyDuff Gordon and then by Ziegfeld stagemanager Ned Wayburn, that came to definethe couturier model and the new chorine,Photography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

266 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. Brownthe Follies’ “A” model-showgirl (Brown2009). On stage, Dolores did not speak, sing,or dance; she simply appeared in costume,moving with slow, statuesque movementsin front of her audience, punctuating herpromenade with poses showcasing herstunning gown. When she appeared asthe white peacock in the “Beautiful Birds”number of the 1919 Midnight Frolic (Figure3), for example, her regal demeanor andfantastic costume awed contemporaryaudiences.A reviewer reported an exchangebetween two audience members: “Is shegoing to dance?” A voice replied: “A womanwho can stand and walk like that doesn’thave to dance.” 8 Dolores was the popularizerof the series of Wayburn movements thatlater became known as the “Ziegfeld Walk,”the slow promenade that became centralto both Ziegfeld and Busby Berkeley’s “massornament” of geometric showgirl formations(Kracauer 1995; Mizejewski 1999; Cohen1980).Dolores’s corporeal performance was,explicitly, a racialized performance of whiteaffect. In the First World War era, in the wakeof the largest immigration wave in the UnitedStates, whiteness was a national projectthat depended upon the incorporation ofFig 3 Dolores as the WhitePeacock in the 1919 Ziegfeldshow, Midnight Frolic. Vanity Fair,December 1919. Baron Adolphde Meyer, photographer;Dolores (Kathleen Rose),model. © Condé NastPublications.Photography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 267provisional whites, such as Italians and Jews,at the expense of racial others, such asblacks and Asians, whose exclusion shoredup the newly stabilized category of the“Caucasian” (Rogin 1996; Jacobson 1998,2000). As numerous scholars have argued,popular theatre, especially the Ziegfeldstage, emerged as one of the key sitesthrough which the period’s racial logic wasnormalized (Mizejewski 1999; Glenn 2000;Brown, J. 2008). In choreographing Dolores’sfacial expressions, gestures, and movementvocabulary, both Duff Gordon and NedWayburn elaborated a subdued style wherelimbs moved close to the body, marked byfluidity and unhurried grace (Figure 4).These studied movements, characterizedby an elite hauteur signified by an upliftedchin and unsmiling countenance, emergedfrom a longer history of racializeddeportment and posture (Todd 1977[1920]; Yosifon and Stearns 1998; Gordon2006); they were synonymous with thewhite pretension that underlay the moderncultivated body (and it was precisely thisvocabulary of white pretension that African-Americans parodied in the cake-walk,which became a national craze at just thistime). The subdued gestural vocabularyof the couture mannequin provided amarked departure from the exaggeratedmovements of most contemporary racializedperformance styles, where the traditionof blackface minstrelsy on both sides ofthe Atlantic conscripted black bodiesinto a performance style recognizable byexaggerated motions and expressions:“eccentric” dance styles marked by armsand legs akimbo, staring eyes and clownsmiles (Lott 1993; Lhamon 1998; Ullman1997; Kibler 1999; Glenn 2000; SotiropoulosFig 4 Vogue, September 15, 1918, p. 29. BaronAdolph de Meyer, photographer; Dolores(Kathleen Rose), model. Text by staff, © CondéNast Publications; scan courtesy of Toronto PublicLibrary.2006; Brooks 2006). In contrast with these“primitive” displays, the subdued gestures ofthe couturier model performed a corporeallanguage that consolidated a discourse ofAnglo-Saxon white supremacy for its eliteviewers. While Dolores’s performancewas certainly one of class passing, herexpressionless demeanor also signified thehauteur of elite whiteness.Photography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

268 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. BrownIn these de Meyer images, the complexhistory and cultural significance ofracialization and class passing are condensedin Dolores’s expressionless visage. Aworking-class immigrant herself, but oneprivileged with impeccable Anglo-Saxoncredentials, Dolores’s performance of elitewhiteness helped consolidate what Muñozhas called a “standard national affect” inthe United States, against which otheraffective codes appear as “over the top andexcessive” (Muñoz 2000: 69). Here, Dolores’slack of affect serves as an ideal canvas forboth de Meyer’s accessorizing and for theimplied viewer’s commodity longings. Atthis historical moment, this combination ofde Meyer’s queer pictorialist excessivenessand Dolores’s laconic whiteness proveda powerful combination for Nast’s elitereadership.Queer excess is registered in theseessays in two ways: through both deMeyer’s accumulation of detail and objects,and through Dolores’s affectlessness. Herintimidating countenance could be read,perhaps only by theatre and fashion insiders,as a queer performance, an over-the-topdisplay of icy hauteur that parodies the classperformance of celebrity sitters such asMrs. Harry Payne Whitney (Figure 1). Notmuch is known about Dolores’s life after1923, when she married an American artcollector and son of a St. Louis dry goodsmerchant, William Tudor Wilkinson, andmoved to France—where she remaineduntil her death in 1975. The one pictureI have found of Dolores in her post-NewYork years supports the extant textualsources in suggesting her participation inthe politically left and queer bohemiancircles of New York’s Greenwich VillageFig 5 Mrs. Tudor Wilkinson (nee Kathleen Rose,aka Dolores), from Eve: The Lady’s Pictorial, March25, 1925.and interwar European countercultures(Figure 5). 9 The barest hint of a smile inthis striking portrait whispers the intriguingpossibility that Dolores’s performance ofwhite affectlessness may have doubled asa performance of queer excess, at leastto those in the know. Queer or not, herperformance of affectlessness also functionedas a racial project, one that re-emphasizedthe corporeal meanings of the elite’swhiteness as controlled, constrained, andunderstated.Commodifying Queer AffectDe Meyer’s fashion photography broughtan aesthetic vocabulary to a commercialmedium (fashion) precisely at the historicalmoment when merchandisers teamed upPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 269with psychologists and advertisers to harnessconsumer longing and transform it into sales.Although it had been possible, technically, tointroduce photography to advertising andfashion illustration since the half-tone wasperfected in the late 1880s (Jussim 1983;Harris 1979), the medium’s indexicality,combined with most photographers’ lackof training in the principles of fine art,meant that most commercial photographslacked the connotative codes necessary forcommercial culture’s appeals to emotion(Brown 2000; Yochelson 1996; Bogart 1995).It was pictorialism, as an aesthetic approach,that convinced art directors, accountexecutives, and magazine editors thatphotography could compete with lush penand-inkillustrations by Charles MontgomeryFlagg or Charles Dana Gibson. Pictorialism’semphasis on connoting feeling, its ability tostir the emotions, dovetailed perfectly withadvertisers’ increasing recognition that notonly were the most effective sales appealsdirected towards an emotional, ratherthan rational, consumer, but also that thevast majority of purchases were made bywomen (Marchand 1985; Scanlon 1995;Garvey 1996). In the world of advertisingphotography, the pictorialist incursion intocommerce was indebted to the work ofphotographer Lejaren à Hiller; in fashionphotography, Baron Adolph de Meyer’spictorialist work convinced editors thatphotography could compete, and eventuallysurpass, the work of commercial illustrators(Brown 2000).De Meyer brought together pictorialism’saesthetic vocabulary with a queercosmopolitan sensibility characterized byaffective excess to create stunning fashionphotographs that perfectly matched CondéNast’s needs. Unlike the flat documents ofhis photographic competitors, de Meyer’sphotographs animated the magazine’sluxurious commodity culture. De Meyer’sphotographs sought to produce a utopianflight of aesthetic feeling which the text thentethered to a specific, preferred outcome:sales. As the caption for de Meyer’s portraitof Jeanne Eagels notes, the arrangementof a “real lace veil … is one of the highestforms of art … if one craves it—and whatbride wouldn’t?—it can be purchased forfive thousand dollars.” 10 His photographs,emerging from a queer cosmopolitanismthat had once privileged the aestheticmovement’s “art for art’s sake,” tied theutopian performative’s desire for a better lifeto the accumulation of luxury goods (Dolan2001; Jameson 1979). De Meyer himself wasdeeply conflicted about his central role incommodifying aesthetic feeling. Towards theend of his life, de Meyer wrote to Stieglitzfor reassurance that he had not betrayedhis talent in committing to commercialphotography; Stieglitz obliged, writing to himin 1940 that “no, you have not prostitutedphotography” (Ehrenkranz 1994: 16).Ironically, the man who had once called deMeyer “a pimp of a man,” Edward Steichen,not only replaced de Meyer at Condé Nastin 1923, but also began then his lucrative,twenty-year relationship with the J. WalterThompson advertising agency (Niven 1997:231; Johnston 1997; Brandow and Ewing2008). This is not to pass judgment on eitherphotographer or the historical relationshipbetween aesthetics and commerce; as eventhe purist Stieglitz recognized, anyone whowould suggest that the lines could be soclearly drawn “does not know what he orshe is talking about” (Ehrenkranz 1994: 16).Photography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

270 De Meyer at Vogue Elspeth H. BrownConclusionThe First World War years markpictorialism’s last gasp as the dominantaesthetic within art photography. In the1915–17 period, Paul Strand abandonedthe pictorialists’ soft focus in favor of thehard edges and formal emphases of straightphotography. Though art photography’smove towards modernism is certainlymore complex than this single marker,in hindsight it is clearly the case that deMeyer’s Vogue years corresponded withart photography’s rejection of pictorialism’stechnical and emotional excessivenessin favor of modernism’s sharp lines andcamera eye (Strand 1980 [1917]; Bochner2005; Yochelson 1996). Nothing signaledthis transition more clearly than the staffchanges at Vogue. De Meyer had been thefirst of several key defections from CondéNast to Hearst; he left for Harper’s Bazaarfor a much greater salary, more creativecontrol over magazine layouts, and a Hearstfundedapartment in Paris (where he andOlga moved in 1922). In 1923, the yearSteichen returned from France, Nast hiredhim as his magazines’ chief staff photographer(in Brandow and Ewing 2008). As Nast’sbiographer writes in what is generallyrepresentative of scholars’ descriptions ofthe shift from pictorialism to modernism,“Steichen swept away de Meyer’s unreal,filmy creations and replaced them with asculptural, clean, pure, realism” (Seebohm1982: 201). This transition, however, canbe understood in gendered terms as well,away from (female) “filmy” feeling towardsthe “pure” and “real” heteronormativemasculinity of the conservative 1920s.De Meyer’s gender and sexual queerness,inseparable from his photographic aesthetic,would find fewer outlets in the Coolidge-era“return to normalcy.”Notes1 I would like to express my thanks to the TorontoPhotography Seminar, especially Thy Phu andLinda Steer; to Ann Cvetkovich, who first got mestarted on thinking about feeling as an analyticcategory; and to Jaipreet Virda, whose researchassistance for this article has been very helpful.2 The quote is from a letter de Meyer wrote toAlfred Stieglitz in 1940, located in the StieglitzArchive, Collection of American Literature,Beinecke Rare Book Room and ManuscriptLibrary, Yale University and quoted in AnneEhrenkranz, “A Singular Elegance,” 1994, p. 13. Thebiographical information about de Meyer is drawnfrom Ehrenkranz’s essay, as well as from PhilippeJulian, “De Meyer,” in Robert Brandau, ed., DeMeyer (1976); Nancy Hall-Duncan, The History OfFashion Photography (1979), pp. 32–43; and ArthurOllman, The Model Wife (1999) (Ollman drawsheavily on the Ehrenkranz essay of 1994).3 The pun references both Maurice Maeterlink’s1893 play and Claude Debussy’s 1902 operaPélléas et Mélisande (1902), central artifacts of theEuropean Symbolists. See Caroline Seebohm, TheMan Who Was Vogue, p. 194.4 For useful insights into the changing nature ofmagazine publishing in these years, see JenniferScanlon (1995) and Ellen G. Garvey (1996).5 See Ehrenkranz, “A Singular Elegance,” p. 37,for the claim that “not until 1917 did fashionphotography appear in Vogue as a distinct genre”and the dubious claim that “De Meyer hit hisstride at Vogue early in 1914,” p. 39, for whichI’ve found little evidence; Ehrenkranz does notprovide references for her assertions. ReferencingEhrenkranz, Arthur Ollman writes, incorrectly Iwould argue, based upon looking through themagazine, that “from 1913–1922 he worked asa staff photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair” inOllman, The Model Wife, p. 37. I think these errorsstem from Ehrenkranz’s reading of Seebohm’sbiography of Nast. Seebohm argues that NastPhotography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

Elspeth H. Brown De Meyer at Vogue 271hired de Meyer as a staff photographer, butshe does not mention 1913 as the date ofcontract (Seebohm, The Man Who Was Vogue,195). Seebohm had access to the Condé Nastfamily for her biography. According to CynthiaCathcart, Director of Library and InformationServices at Condé Nast Publications in NewYork, there is next to no archival material extantfrom these years.6 The quote is from “Versatility is the FirstPrinciple of Decoration,” Vogue August 1, 1917,pp. 46–47.7 Quote is from Ehrenkranz, “A Singular Elegance,”p. 40.8 Quote from October 3, 1919, reviews microfilmroll 1917/1918–1919/1920, Robinson LockeCollection of Theatrical Scrapbooks, New YorkPublic Library for the Performing Arts, LincolnCenter, NYC.9 The only witnesses to the 1923 wedding ofthe Wilkinsons were the very well-knownGreenwich Village bohemians and politicalactivists Doris Stevens (a suffragist and feministwho was famously arrested for picketingWilson’s White House) and her husband DudleyField Malone, a left lawyer and Democratic partyactivist. There is some suggestion that Doloresshared the left politics of her wedding witnesses;during the Second World War she was arrestedby the German government for her work in theFrench resistance, and kept in prison until Francewas liberated in 1944. She led a very private lifewith close friends drawn from bohemian circles;she had no children. Obituary, New York Times, p.44, Nov. 20, 1975; clippings, Dolores file, BRTC;“W.T. Wilkinson Weds American ‘Dolores’,” NewYork Times, May 15, 1923, p. 19; Doris Stevens,Jailed for Freedom (New York: Boni and Liveright,1920).10 Miss Jeanne Eagels, Vogue, May 1, 1917, p. 54.ReferencesBeaton, Cecil and Buckland, Gail. 1975. The MagicImage: The Genius of Photography. London: PavillionBooks.Bochner, Jay. 2005. An American Lens: Scenes fromAlfred Stieglitz’s New York Secession. Boston: MIT Press.Bogart, Michael. 1995. Artists, Advertising, and theBorder of Art, 1890–1960. Chicago and London:University of Chicago Press.Brandow, Todd and Ewing, William A. 2008. EdwardSteichen: In High Fashion: The Condé Nast Years,1923–1937. New York: W.W. Norton.Brooks, Daphne. 2006. Bodies in Dissent: SpectacularPerformances of Race and Freedom, 1850–1910.Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Brown, Elspeth H. 2000. Rationalizing Consumption:Photography and Commercial Illustration, 1913–1919. Enterprise and Society 1(4) (December):715–738.Brown, Elspeth H. 2005. The Corporate Eye:Photography and the Rationalization of AmericanCommercial Culture, 1884–1929. Baltimore, MD:Johns Hopkins University Press.Brown, Elspeth H. 2009 (forthcoming). TheEmergence of the Model in the Early TwentiethCentury United States. In Joanne Entwistle andElizabeth Wissinger (eds), Fashion Models: Modeling asImage, Text and Industry. Oxford: Berg.Brown, Jayna. 2008. Babylon Girls: Black WomenPerformers and the Shaping of the Modern. Durham,NC: Duke University Press.Caffin, C.A. 1972 [1901]. Photography as a Fine Art.New York: American Photographic Book PublishingCompany (facsimile reproduction).Cohen, B. 1980. The Dance Direction of Ned Wayburn:Selected Topics in Musical Staging, 1901–1923. NewYork University, Ph.D. dissertation.Chase, Edna and Chase, Ilka. 1954. Always in Vogue.London: Victor Gollancz.Chauncey, George. 1994. Gay New York: Gender,Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World,1890–1940. New York: Basic Books.Cvetkovich, Ann. 2007. Public Feelings. South AtlanticQuarterly. 106(3) (Summer): 459–468.Photography & Culture Volume 2—Issue 3—November 2009, pp. 253–274

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