Yevonde: Life and Colour

'Yevonde’s ’30s portraits of high-society beauties and Hollywood stars are finally getting the attention they deserve.' - British Vogue

'Yevonde: Life and Colour opens at the revamped National Portrait Gallery ... and will feature a comprehensive selection of works dreamed up by this brilliant artist across a 60-year-career. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more joyful show anywhere in the country.' - Jennifer Higgie, The Telegraph

‘Be original or die would be a good motto for photographers to adopt…let them put life and colour into their work.’ - Yevonde.

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Yevonde (1893–1975) was a businesswoman and tireless creator, as an innovator committed to colour photography when it was not considered a serious medium, her work is significant in the history of British portrait photography. Yevonde championed photography during a time where there were few women photographers working professionally, and this book tells the story of her life, works, and 60-year career.

Yevonde: Life and Colour brings the photographer’s works together again for the first time in 20 years and features previously unpublished works. This book showcases her experimentation with a range of techniques and genres including colour photography, portraiture, still-lifes, solarisation, and the Vivex colour process, and repositions her as a modern artist of the twentieth century.

This highly illustrated publication provides in-depth context to Yevonde’s images, considering their aesthetic and mythic references. 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.