faces from the past

A tendresse of old portraits. “Every portrait is an example of: I once existed—and looked like this.” (Berger, Ways of Seeing)

[vintagephoto]

1960’s photobooth

[aprettyjewishyear]

I am in training don't kiss me. photograph by Claude Cahun, 1927. she named herself Claude because of the name's gender neutrality and Cahun after her grandmother who raised her. her lifelong companion and collaborator was Marcel Moore, who also chose her own name. Claude's photography explored themes of nonconformity, queerness, and surrealism. much of her work was destroyed by the Nazis after she and Marcel were convicted of sabotaging the Nazi cause.

[lacalaveracatrina]

Portrait de Jean Carriès (1885), Charles Giron.

[vintage-every-day]

The first female gardeners employed at London's Kew Gardens. Eleanor Morland, Gertrude Cope and Alice Hutchings. Photographed in 1896.

[facesofold]

David Gonzalez. Dancing in the South Bronx. New York City, 1979.

[thunderstruck9]

[monsieurlabette]

Jules-Élie Delaunay (French, 1828-1891), Portrait of Monsieur Vinchon, 1880. Oil on panel, 22 x 16 cm.

[stanestreet]

Flying Officer Neville Duke of No 92 (East India) Squadron. Duke was a Battle of Britain pilot and is pictured here with his Spitfire at RAF Biggin Hill in 1941. After the war, Duke became one of Britain's leading test pilots and broke the world air-speed record in 1953. Photograph: Cecil Beaton/Imperial War Museum

[blastedheath]

Kalman Kemeny (British, born Hungary, 1896-1994), Quentin Crisp. Oil on board, 19½ x 14 in.

[random-brushstrokes]

Isaac Israels - Portrait of a Young Girl with a Cigarette (undated)

[facesofold]

[blastedheath]

Gustave Courbet (French, 1839-1877), Seated Young Man, 1847. Black crayon, 45 x 34 cm. Private collection.

[wehadfacesthen]

Stars of New York City Ballet Tanquil  Le Clercq, Diana Adams, and Maria Tallchief in their dressing room, early 1950′s

[cigarettemommy]

Self-Portrait at the Dressing Table

Zinaida Serebriakova, 1909

[facesofold]

Bruce Davidson (b. 1933). Jimmy Armstrong, ‘The Dwarf’. 1958.

“He was standing alone outside the tent smoking a cigarette,” when Davidson first saw him. Dressed in a tux and a top hat he held a small bouquet of paper flowers, and “stood there pensively in the privacy of his inner thoughts”. Davidson approached him and began taking pictures. Right from the off, he says, “he seemed to know that it was the inner moment I was drawn to and not his clown face or physical appearance.” Jimmy became Davidson’s way in, letting him into his private world and acting as his guide to circus life. “We became friends, although we seldom spoke to one another,” Davidson remembers. Theirs was a bond of unspoken understanding – a contentment to be in each other’s company that didn’t need excessive words.

[diemelusine]

Portrait of the founder of the gallery, Pavel Mikhaylovich Tretyakov (1883) by Ilya Repin. Tretyakov Gallery.

[facesofold]

Maureen Duffy (1933–2026), author and activist, and one of the first women in Britain to come out publicly.

[facesofold]

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson. Oil on canvas, 1887.

Of Stevenson, Sargent wrote to Henry James, “He seemed to me the most intense creature I had ever met.”