Yevonde: Life and Colour

The first comprehensive monograph on the forgotten radical innovator of color photography and mythic, surreal portraiture. The British photographer Yevonde was a businesswoman and tireless creator; as an innovator committed to color photography when it was not considered a serious medium, her work is significant in the history of portrait photography. Yevonde’s portraits embody glorified tradition countered with a desire for the new; her most renowned body of work is a series of women dressed as goddesses posed in surreal tableaux from the 1930s. Yevonde championed photography during a time when there were few women photographers working professionally, and this book tells the story of her life, her works and her 60-year career. Yevonde: Life and Colour brings the photographer’s works together for the first time in 20 years. With an abundance of reproductions, and featuring previously unpublished works, the book showcases her experimentation with a range of techniques and genres including color photography, portraiture, still lifes, solarization and the Vivex color process, and repositions her as a key modern artist of the 20th century. It also provides in-depth context for Yevonde’s images, considering their aesthetic and mythic references. Yevonde (1893–1975), also known as Madame Yevonde, was a London-based photographer of portraits and still lifes whose motto was "be original or die."