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Great twentieth century women celebrated in Washington, DC photo exhibit
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Icons of the twentieth century are celebrated with “visual biographies” in “Women of Our Time”, a newly opened photography exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC and on its website.
The stunning images range from Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks, and Marilyn Monroe, to Native American reformer and writer Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša), revolutionary Emma “Red Emma” Goldman, Gypsy Rose Lee, and rock legend Janis Joplin.
“One of the wonderful things about this exhibition is it’s so marvelously eclectic,” said Emmy-winning journalist Cokie Roberts at a National Portrait Gallery (NPG) reception October 16.
Roberts added that the photographs of these legendary women “are a way for their words to live on. Mae West’s ‘Come up and see me some time’ is as famous as ‘To be or not to be.’ And Fanny Lou Hamer’s ‘I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired’ became the great rallying cry of the civil rights movement.”
Mae West is photographed in a slinky, sparkly gown and white fur, holding a cigarette to be lit by several tuxedo’ed men flipping their lighters. Fannie Lou Hamer is shown singing exuberantly and sweating profusely during the 1966 March Against Fear to dramatize the determination of African Americans to gain their full rights.
Roberts, named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress last April, said “These women are full of wisdom for the ages.”
She cited Katharine Graham’s words as encapsulating what women in all centuries have gone through. Graham had commented on succeeding her husband, who committed suicide, in running her family’s media company and its flagship newspaper the Washington Post. “I shut my eyes and stepped off the ledge. The surprise was that I landed on my feet.”
Graham’s jaw is set firmly and her arms are crossed at her waist in stolid determination in the photograph taken by Richard Avedon in 1976.
A similar sentiment is on the wall text accompanying the portrait of playwright Wendy Wasserstein whose characters were “the smart, successful, yet often self-doubting woman trying to find herself in modern society.” Wasserstein wrote 11 plays and several books before dying of lymphoma at age 55. Photographer Susan Johann captured a grinning, somewhat disbelieving Wasserstein just after receiving word that she had won a Pulitzer for The Heidi Chronicles.
One of the most striking of all the extraordinary photographs is an ominous shot of Billie Holiday. Emblematic of her troubled life, the photograph is so dark that her face can hardly be seen. Her teeth and her dangling rhinestone earrings are the only light in the 1957 portrait by Roy deCarava.
The exhibition highlights photographic portraiture as visual biography. Helen Keller is shown smelling a rose and reading Braille, using her only two senses. Poet Marianne Moore who wrote “Elephants” is photographed in front of elephants at the Bronx Zoo. Marian Anderson is shown singing during an opera performance in a majestic brocade costume, instead of at her historic Lincoln Memorial appearance. Lit wit Dorothy Parker, arms clutching her shoulders, looks like a “blend of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth” as her friend, critic Alexander Woollcott, termed her. Babe Didrikson Zaharias, a superstar athlete in every sport she ever tried, is swinging a golf club, and The Supremes are singing supremely.
The portraiture, all from NPG’s collection, is by many of the last century’s leading photographers, including Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Berenice Abbott, Lotte Jacobi, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, and Linda McCartney.
Several female photographers are among the “Women of Our Time”, including Margaret Bourke-White and Diane Arbus.
The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition attempted the impossible – selecting among the twentieth century’s most remarkable women. But how apt, because women achieved the impossible in the past century.
If it’s impossible for you to see the exhibition in Washington, you can view some of it on the Web, or in either of two companion books.
Cokie Roberts wrote the preface to both books. One is the small, soft-cover Women of Our Time: 75 Portraits of Remarkable Women. The other is a coffee table version, Women of Our Time: An Album of Twentieth-Century Photographs (Merrell Publishers and National Portrait Gallery). A few of the portraits in the book differ from the ones in the exhibitions, such as even more dramatic photos of painter Georgia O’Keeffe, and Billie Holiday.
Roberts’ latest book is Ladies of Liberty (HarperCollins).
As the Living Legend told the reception, “Let’s celebrate the women of our time, standing firmly on their feet.”
I firmly agree and add, let’s celebrate these women by following firmly in their footsteps.
More About:
Art ·
Women of Our Time ·
photography ·
photographic portraits ·
Cokie Roberts ·
Mae West ·
Katharine Graham ·
Wendy Wasserstein ·
Billie Holiday ·
books ·
Helen Keller ·
Smithsonian ·
History ·
Museum ·
National Portrait Gallery ·
Television ·
Museums ·
Women's Issues
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