Tallullah Bankhead in Forsaking All Others, 1927. Cover: Claudette Colbert in Dynamo, 1929.
In conjunction with the exhibition at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts scheduled for fall 2012
With a career spanning five decades, Florence Vandamm was one of the most prolific and widely published female commercial photographers of the early 20th century. Born and educated in London, Vandamm trained first as a painter, and then later discovered photography as a more progressive and lucrative means of portraiture. One of the first women elected to membership in the Royal Photographic Society, Vandamm’s transition from painter into the formidable studio photographer she was to become is documented in her own personal photo archive as well as in never-before-exhibited scrapbooks in the collection of The New York Public Library, which are replete with dramatically-lit portraits commissioned by the world’s most celebrated performing artists, periodicals, concert halls, talent agents, newspapers, and book publishers alike.
180-200 illustrations B/W 4 color 10 – 15,000 words 256 Pages 10” x 12“
Described in a 1911 feature article as one of very few photographers who, “…use their camera as an artist can use his brushes,” Vandamm enjoyed considerable success from 1908 until 1920 among London’s international literary and musical luminaries, and established a longstanding professional relationship with Vanity Fair and Vogue (Condé Nast Publications), which was to serve her well when she and her husband, George R. Thomas—known professionally as “Tommy Vandamm”—emigrated to New York in 1922. Taciturn by nature, Vandamm shunned personal publicity of all kinds and trained her husband to assist her—later taking him on as a partner in the business. Much like her old-master influenced portrait subjects, details about Florence Vandamm’s life have remained obscured and in the shadows—resulting in the erroneous (but frequently encountered) assumption that her more outspoken and self-promoting husband was the driving force behind the success and reputation of the Vandamm Studio. Consequently, few are even aware that the visionary photographer who lent her talent and her name to the Vandamm Studio was in fact a woman.
Self-portrait of Florence Vandamm, 1911.
Portrait of George R. Thomas, holding a photograph of Florence and their son, nd.
Drawing upon The New York Public Library’s Vandamm Studio Collection of prints, contact sheets and negatives (which was acquired by The Library directly from the artist), as well as the holdings of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and The Schomburg Center, this exhibition and accompanying monograph will at once re-introduce and bring long overdue tribute to Florence Vandamm—one of the most successful female photographers of the early 20th century. Perhaps the most comprehensive visual record of American performing arts, the output of the Vandamm Studio has, up until now, largely been utilized as a backdrop for the retelling of Broadway history. Exploring the technical innovations, stylistic idiosyncrasies and working arrangements of the Vandamm Studio, this volume and exhibition will place Vandamm’s career within the context of 20th century popular culture by looking beyond Broadway—serving to define and clarify the creative and professional contributions of one of New York’s most prolific and esteemed photographic studios.
From a technical and creative perspective, Vandamm’s stylistic range spanned the 19th-century British art photography and portraiture traditions, but by the early teens her work was already infused with Modernist tendencies. Nevertheless, it was the more painterly, dramatic and shadowy, chiaroscuro handling of light and subject (which so clearly harkens back to her fine arts training as a portrait painter) that mark Vandamm’s mature signature style.
L, Edith Evans as the Nurse, Romeo and Juliet, 1934; R, Billy Quinn and Burgess Meredith in Winterset, 1935
Capitalizing on Florence’s artful photographic renderings, commissions at the Vandamm Studio were divided accordingly: Florence undertook nearly all of the intimate portraits and headshots while her husband shot the bulk of the stage settings. When, faced with the deaths of her husband and her only child in the mid-1940s, the strong-willed widow persevered with her professional career, taking on both performance and portrait assignments for the next 20 years.
The Albertina Rasch Dancers in Face the Music , 1932.
Emigrating to America in 1922, while attempting to establish her own studio in New York, Florence worked as a back-up photographer for the artistically inclined but notoriously temperamental Francis Bruguière—under whose influence she developed her affinity for lush, dark psychological spaces and a masterful handling of negative space. When (in 1924) Bruguière decided to focus more on experimental photo work, Vandamm inherited many of his clients—becoming the primary photographer for The Theatre Guild, at the time Broadway’s most important producers. Bruguière’s established clientele, coupled with Florence’s following of international performers and literary figures, promptly established the Vandamm Studio as a formidable competitor among New York’s theatrical photo studios such as White Studio (1903 - 1931) and Eileen Darby/Graphic House (1940 - 1964).
Green Grow the Lilacs, 1931.
Through the course of her career, Florence Vandamm created iconic images of such legendary stage, screen and musical stars as Katharine Cornell, Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine, Katharine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Mary Martin, Fred Astaire, Todd Duncan, Paul Robeson, Arthur Rubenstein, Andres Segovia, Myra Hess, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Katherine Dunham, Doris Humphrey, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart and Rodgers & Hammerstein to name but a few. Becoming known for her intimate, closely cropped, immediately recognizable but seemingly un-posed theater portraits, by the late 1920s Vandamm had begun an exploration into what later proved to be her greatest formal innovation—the now ubiquitous 8 x10 “head shot”— which has since become a theater and performing arts staple. With a grasp of both the clear portraiture and deft shadow manipulation popularized by Stieglitz and the Photo Secessionists, Vandamm’s work was refreshingly free of the Pictorialist haze and lingering Victoriana of many of her contemporaries. This clarity lent it self well to the commercial printing press, and appealed to newspapers, magazines and periodicals alike. Correspondingly, throughout her career Vandamm enjoyed a lucrative relationship with Condé Nast Publications: Her first credited image—an expressionist photograph of dancer Dorothy Mackaill—ran in the March 1920 edition of Vanity Fair, then still part of Vogue.
Alfred Lunt, Noel Coward and Lynn Fontanne in Design for Living, 1933.
Katharine Hepburn as Jane Eyre (pre-Broadway tour), 1937.
Fred Astaire in The Bandwagon, 1931.
Tilly Losch in The Bandwagon, 1931.
Vandamm’s arrival in New York corresponded with the nascent stages of avant-garde theater and the birth of modern dance. Showing a marked interest in photographing experimental performance, her lens witnessed the Neighborhood Playhouse’s fostering of modern dance and opera, The Provincetown Playhouse’s productions of O’Neill, all manner of Harlem Renaissance theater groups, as well as the political theater of the 1930s, from which Method acting emerged.
The storm scene in Porgy, 1927.
Todd Duncan and Warren Coleman in Porgy and Bess, 1935.
Jean-Leon DestinĂŠ and Katherine Dunham in Bal Negre, 1946.
Documenting these experimenters as they moved into mainstream drama, musicals, and revues, Vandamm won high praise for her ability to freeze plot defining moments and identifying each comic’s individual, signature “shtick” for publicity stills. Described by veteran actress Marian Seldes as, “Part director, part photographer”, Florence Vandamm showed a genuine understanding of stage lighting design and was known to demand as much of a “performance” from actors when shooting a still shot as they would be expected to deliver in front of an audience.
Bert Lahr.
Girls in Uniform, 1932.
With a firm commitment to documenting women directors, designers, playwrights, and other professionals in the theater, Vandamm displayed a keen awareness of the elaborate network of talent that went into the making of a successful production.
L-R: critic Dorothy Parker, 1927; choreographer Doris Humphrey, 1931; director Margaret Webster, 1938; playwright Sophie Treadwell, 1928.
L-R: Garson Kanin, 1953; Pat, doorman at the Empire Theater, 1942.
In many ways her lens democratized theater culture: by photographing all members of the back stage crew, theater staff, grips, set decorators—even the ushers—at once Vandamm acknowledged and ennobled the contributions of everyone involved. Never before published in a single volume, the Vandamm collection offers a comprehensive perspective and a rare insight into the cultural underpinnings of the 20th century’s uniquely American art form—musical theater.
Grips for The Bandwagon, 1931.
Lillian Gish in Mainly for Lovers.
Katharine Cornell.
Once referred to as, “…one of the Rembrandts of Modern Photography,” the work of Florence Vandamm deserves its place in the annals of photographic history and popular culture at large.
Florence Vandamm: Career · Studied painting and photography in London · Elected to membership Royal Society of Photography; multiple works included in the Annual Exhibitions of 1908, 1911 and 1914 · Opens her own studio in 1908, focusing on portraits of musicians and authors for promotional use, among them, cellist Felix Salmond (1910), Artur Rubenstein, and Israel Zangwill (1914) · Her portrait of Naval Commander E.R.G.R. Evans, survivor of the Scott Polar Expedition, is reproduced in newspapers through the English speaking world, 1913 - 1918. · Maintained studios in London from 1910 – 1926 on Regent Street, Victoria Street, and St. Johns Wood Road · Commissions from Condé Nast for portraits in Vanity Fair, primarily writers and performers for the monthly “Nominated for the Hall of Fame” feature, 1920 – 1930s · To New York 1922; probably maintained studios in both New York and London through 1920s · In her own name and through Francis Bruguière, photographs experimental productions at the Neighborhood Playhouse and Provincetown Playhouse · 1924, was granted Bruguière’s position as principal photographer for the Theatre Guild, Inc., a relationship which lasted until the 1960s, while establishing herself as a photographer of early modern dance. Brugiere moved back into experimental photography. · 1931, White Studio (primary competition) closes after 28 years of documenting New York performance · 1933, photographs the first invitational performances of The American Ballet, Balanchine’s first troupe · Maintains the New York portrait and performance photography studio until the early 1960s. Husband George R. Thomas (known as Tommy Vandamm) specialized in performance documentation; she took on both performance and studio work after his death in 1944. · Last known photographs in 1962 from a studio session with Dame Myra Hess · Vandamm Studio Collection acquired by The New York Public Library in 1965 · 2008, rediscovered and hailed in England due to the inclusion of her photographs of Alice White and the Albertina Rasch Dancers in the Vanity Fair exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Exhibition continued to LACMA and National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia.
Florence Vandamm: Personal life · Born Catherine Florence Vandamm, Islington, London, summer 1883, the daughter of a solicitor · Married Leonard Ernest Notcutt, June 20, 1915. Notcutt was an actor who had been given the Bancroft Gold Medal on graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art · Notcutt killed in World War I action, May 1917 · Married American engineer George R. Thomas in London, 1919 · Son (Robert Sherwin Thomas) born July 21, 1920 · Husband and son each die in New York, 1944 · Florence Vandamm dies in New York, 1966
The Albertina Rasch Dancers in Face the Music, 1932.
Barbara Cohen-Stratyner is the Judy R. and Alfred A. Rosenberg Curator of Exhibitions for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, at which she has developed over 60 exhibitions on the visual and performing arts, as well as co-curating three exhibitions on fashion at the Museum of the City of New York. She has written extensively on design, theater, dance, popular entertainments, popular music, and their iconographies. She has an M.F.A. degree in Theatre Design and a Ph. D. in Performance Studies from New York University.
A U T HOR BIO S
Katharine Cornell, 1930.
He Who Gets Slapped, 1946.
Kohle Yohannan is an author, curator and cultural historian. He holds a B.A. in Art History from Columbia University, and a Master’s degree from The Cooper-Hewitt Program in Design History & Decorative Art, and has recently completed his doctoral course work for a Ph. D. in Cultural History. Kohle is the author of Claire McCardell: Redefining Modernism (Abrams, 1998), as well as John Rawlings: Thirty Years in Vogue (Arena/Condé Nast, 2001), and Valentina: American Couture & The Cult of Celebrity (Rizzoli, 2009). Kohle also wrote and co-curated The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion (Yale University Press, 2010) – an exhibition and accompanying publication at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Jed Harris.