Glamour Etymology

“The word glamour (magic charm, alluring beauty or charm, a spell affecting the eye, a kind of haze in the air) comes from the Scottish term gramarye (magic, enchantment, spell), an alteration of the English word grammar (any sort of scholarship)” http://ewonago.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/etymology-of-glamour/

I want to be a theorist.  I want to be a showgirl.  These two desires, which I try to reconcile, are brought together in the etymology of glamour.  The glamour-spell affecting the eye.  The spell of the viewer cursed to interpret what s/he sees.  We can never believe what we see, because we are constantly trying to peer through the haze of our own projections onto what we see.  The haze can never clear, we can never see something on its own terms because we are not mechanically viewing devices; cameras.  We are interpreting subjects, condemned to only ever see through our own flawed eyes.  

The Subjectification of Leigh Ledare's Mom

Review of Leigh Ledare: The Confectioner's Confectioner, 16th April - 5th June, Pilar Corrias, London

Leigh Ledare’s ongoing photography work generously reveals the relationship he has with his mother.  In the recent solo show at Pilar Corrias fragments from his childhood, notes written by Tina/Mom and himself make explicit some elements of their relationship.  Tina/Mom’s thoughts on models is a beautiful ode to the creativity of the photographer’s model, her informal hand-written will expose the love and trust she places in Leigh.  A narrative develops through the notes; the relationship with Dad ended, and Leigh, in some way become Mom’s man/boy.  She talked to him, revealed herself emotionally and physically.  As a ballet dancer, she was trained to be invested in her body, her artistic tool.  This is the back story.  One day, Tina/Mom asks Leigh to photograph her, to record her aging, vulnerable body now, before it is too late, before the flesh decays into an unphotographable state; before it can no longer be the object.  And so Leigh dutifully does.  Complicit in this recording, he is the third person in the room whilst Tina/Mom gets it on with Leigh-substitute boys.  Her acts performed for Leigh, a performance for his benefit.  Does she want to arouse Leigh?  Make him jealous?  Or push him to reject her out of repulsion for her sexuality, her aggressive exhibitionism designed to ensnare Leigh in an Oedipal game.  Does she want him to throw down the camera and fuck her, pushing aside his replacement?  Sometimes she is naked and alone, still enjoying her sexuality, but without a partner, less performed.  If Leigh did not record this, if he did not have his camera in the room, how would he have reacted?  How did he react, used as Tina/Mom’s sexual documenter?

Which answers the question, how can a sexually explicit photograph of a woman present without question the subjectivity of that woman, before or even preventing the objectification of that woman?  Through the Oedipal narrative, Leigh becomes less the exploiting photographer and more an equal participant with the subject.  The two locked into their fixed positions.  The captions with the photographs, descriptively position the image contents.  But even without such contexts, within the image frame, the faint silvery traces of stretch marks on Tina/Mom’s stomach testify to her mother status and jar with her version of maternal she is therefore enacting.

Leigh reaches beyond this project to challenge his own position from outside this mother-son courtship.  Understanding the plane of representation as ‘the site of the trauma’, the place in which his Mom revealed herself to him, but in a sense foreclosed other possibilities of their relationship, he places himself in Mom’s position by re-enacting her fantasies by being the fantasy for other women.  Leigh becomes women’s object, the Leigh-object: a gift for mother?  Leigh-photographer becomes Leigh-model relinquishing the responsibilities of the lens.

In The Archive

Today I wore white cotton gloves and handled photographs in the research room at the National Media Museum in Bradford. I am looking at two kinds of glamour, a very perfect one, with dreamy colours, courtesy of Walter Bird, and a slightly more real one, from the Daily Herald archive.  The reportage of dancing lines, rehearsal stretches, promotional poses on beaches/airports/streets outside venues.  Something real slips into the photos unnoticed, working against the artifice, tearing a whole in the glamour.  For example a plaster on a bare foot on a girl in a line standing on some driftwood on a beach and a hole in some fishnets, close to the camera.  In a 1956 photo of Tiller girls resting during a ‘Royal Command Show’ rehearsal, rest their legs (neatly) on the chairs in front.  Underneath one pair of fishnets are white ankle socks. 

Walter Bird's photographs however, construct a perfect glamour, the glamour of day-dreams.  Working before the WW2 he used an expensive colour process, Vivex, which I believe is one contributing factor to their loveliness.

There does seem to be a glamour peak in the 1930s.  By the 1950s, something, ‘common’ appears to have been invented, is it the film, cameras, lighting, hairstyles, costumes or make up?  Obviously technological changes in one or all of the above contribute to an erosion of the glamour aesthetic.  Which leads me to wonder, what and who makes glamour?

A Note I Wrote to Myself in Preparation for My Degree Show in 2001

How to present the 'Take Out' project is not a question of how to present the photographs, but how to present my intentions.  The 'hanging' of the piece has become more crucial and more integral to the work.  How the practicalities are negotiated reflects on the work.

I must not aim for perfect or bombastic just because its a "show" (ditch the tap dancers then) but must think of how the idea is best translated into 3D space.

They All Had Glamour

Sometimes I get so confused. I don't know where to start and start in the place I know: the middle.  I know for certain that I was trying to piece an idea from out of the tangle, I had to get hold of the thread and follow it, pull it apart from the others.  I knew it involved photographing; portraits.  

I have to get my camera out, I have to practise with it, what if I have forgotten how to work it?  What if I can't borrow lights and a tripod?  Will I have to buy my own?  I don't think I can, I blew all my money on three 1950s style wrap dresses, which are en route over the Atlantic now, they sent me an email.  

What if I can't work this idea loose, if it sticks together with all the others like cooked spaghetti left in the pan?  I won't be able to tell Jaspar about it, he will think I don't get ideas, that I don't work on them; he will think I don't think.  

I was in the theatrical bookshop off Charing Cross two weeks ago, there was a large book I wanted, but I was erming and ahhing about the cost: £25, I didn't know if I could afford it; but I wanted it and I didn't get it.  On the train home, I realised how important the book was, I realised I had to take glamourous photographs, not of myself, of the other residents.  They are pre-selected you see.  I don't think I knew when I was on the train that I was going; I just hoped.  

The book was called "They All Had Glamour".

The Personal is Political!

Here are the first few paragraphs from the introduction of 'Sisterhood is Powerful' by Robin Morgan (1970) Vintage Books

"Introduction: A Woman's Revolution

This book is an action.  It was conceived, written, edited, copy-edited, proofread, designed, and illustrated by women... During the year that it took to collectively create this anthology, we women involved had to face specific and very concrete examples of our oppression, with regard to the book itself, that simply would not have occurred in putting together any other kind of collection.  Because of the growing consciousness of women's liberation, and, in some cases, because of articles that women wrote for the book, there were not a few "reprisals": five personal relationships were severed, two couples were divorced and one separated, one woman was forced to withdraw her article, by the man she lived with: another's husband kept rewriting the piece until it was unrecognizable as her own; many of the articles were late, and the deadline kept being pushed further ahead, because the authors had so many other pressures on them--from housework to child care to jobs.  More than one woman had trouble finishing her piece because it was so personally painful to commit her gut feelings to paper.  We were also delayed by occurrences that would not have been of even peripheral importance to an anthology written by men: three pregnancies, one miscarriage, and one birth--plus one abortion and one hysterectomy.  Speaking from my own experience, which is what we learn to be unashamed of doing in women's liberation, during the past year I twice survived the almost-dissolution of my marriage, was fired from my job (for trying to organise a union and for being in women's liberation), gave birth to a child, worked on a women's newspaper, marched and picketed, breast-fed the baby, was arrested on a militant women's liberation action, spent some time in jail, stopped wearing makeup and shaving my legs, started learning Karate, and changed my politics completely.  That is, I became, somewhere along the way, a "feminist" committed to a Women's Revolution"

New Pointe Shoes

I don't know, I can't explain, I don't have answers.  I found a new ballet class, with a good pointe class after it, and I did it again.  I wore my Gaynor Mindens and they were too tight.  So I bought a new pair. Half a size larger, and with a wider box.  I am 31 and I bought another pair of pointe shoes.  Part of me thinks it is practice; dancing ballet and pointe.  And another part of me despairs.  Oh but then they first part of me thinks - ha! I can dance en pointe in unexpected places, like giving a conference paper?