Yevonde : Seeing in Colour - Curator’s Talk

Interesting online lecture from the National Portrait Gallery introducing their first exhibition for when the gallery’s reopening in June about the 20th century photographer Yevonde.

I had not come across the female photographer Yevonde or Madam Yevonde but the curator Clare Freestone took us through her life and work in a format which mirrors the plan for the exhibition. She told us how Yevonde had been a suffragette always supported women’s issues. She outlined the various studios she had had and some of her major exhibitions. She talked about her work for the royal family and for women’s magazines and advertising.

Freestone also took us through some of the technicalities of the exhibition including how the gallery has acquired a collection of Yevonde’s negatives in 2021 which have been conserved, catalogued and digitise prior to the show. She also described the complex printing process for Yevonde’s pioneering colour photography from the inter-war years using the Vivex process.

I was already looking forward to the gallery’s reopening but this really wetted my appetite for the excitements to come.

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