Madame Yevonde
Madame Yevonde, Joan Maude, 1932
Madame Yevonde, Dorothy, Duchess of Wellington as Hecate from the ‘Goddesses’ series, 1935
Madame Yevonde, Mrs Michael Balcon as Minerva from the ‘Goddesses’ series, 1935
Madame Yevonde, Mrs Edward Mayer as Medusa from the ‘Goddesses’ series, 1935
Madame Yevonde, Eileen Hunter as Dido from the ‘Goddesses’ series, 1935
Madame Yevonde, Lady Milbanke as Queen of the Amazons (Penthesilea) from the ‘Goddesses’ series, 1935
Madame Yevonde, Self-portrait, 1935
Yevonde Cumbers was born in London on January 5, 1893. After boarding school she was active in the women’s suffrage movement and became a photographer’s apprentice. She took the name Madame Yevonde when she opened her own studio in 1914, specializing in portraits of ‘society women’; the wives, and daughters of businessmen, politicians, cultural figures and aristocracy. In 1921 she was the first woman to address the Congress of Professional Photographers Association in London, the title of her lecture was ‘Photographic Portraiture from the Woman’s Point of View’.
Madame Yevonde was one of the earliest photographers to embrace color photography, extensively using the new Vivex color process in the 1930s. In the studio she shaped color and light by placing colored gels and filters over the lights and her camera lens. Inspired by a costume party she attended and influenced by Man Ray, she created the Goddesses series in 1935. Madame Yevonde continued to photograph until the late 1960s. She died on December 22, 1975.
