Eve Arnold: To Know About Women

Posted by Barbara on October 23, 2023 in Art, Black lives matter, Blog, Exhibition, feminism, Leisure activities, Women's equality issues | 2 comments

Newlands House Gallery in Petworth, West Sussex is a gem. Its home is an 18^th century townhouse in the middle of Petworth, and it hosts exhibitions of internationally known modern and contemporary artists.

Their current exhibition features the work of Eve Arnold; she was born in Philadelphia in 1912, the child of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine who had fled the pogroms. She grew up in poverty but went on to become one of the most important photographers of the 20^th century, photographing a cross section of society in many parts of the world.  It is the first retrospective of her work in ten years.

The exhibition takes you on a chronological tour of Arnold’s work. The spacious rooms with their high ceilings provide the perfect backdrop for these black and white masterpieces of composition, light and shade.

Arnold benefited from the great technical advancements in photography that were happening as she developed her craft. It was a time that saw the birth of photojournalism, and Arnold became one of the few photojournalists offering a female perspective, choosing to photograph mostly female subjects.  She was given her first camera in 1950, at the age of 38, and her only formal education in the subject was a short course in New York run by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of Harper’s Bazaar. 

Arnold joined Magnum Photos Agency in 1951; the photos on display from that period cover a remarkable range of subjects. Arnold went to Harlem to photograph fashion shows and the magazine Picture Post featured them – her first publication. Over the next few years her subjects included migrant workers near the family home on Long Island, and women working at an aircraft factory.  In 1952 she photographed a recording studio session with Marlene Dietrich at Columbia Records. 

Childbirth is a theme that Arnold chose to photograph throughout her career, beginning with the birth of her niece Jane Walsh in 1952.  We do not see Jane’s face or her baby – just two legs mounted on birthing stirrups, with a male doctor and nurse standing facing them, apparently dispassionately. Other photos in this series reflect the maternal; a newborn finger clutching its mother’s finger, and a head shot of a mother gazing in joy at her swaddled baby.  The only visible evidence of the baby is a tiny heel projecting from a bundle. ‘Skin on skin’ was clearly not in vogue during 1950s childbirth.

Arnold met Marilyn Monroe in 1954, and photographed her on film sets for several years. The exhibition includes a short film with Arnold speaking of their relationship. The famous photo of Marilyn reading James Joyce’s Ulysses is one of the few colour photographs in the exhibition.

Jackie Kennedy, a young Queen Elizabeth, ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson and Grace Kelly gaze dispassionately from the walls of one of the rooms. Another features photos of African American students training in passive resistance tactics for school sit-ins and a party in Virginia in which white students are introduced to African American students.  An exhausted woman in a Harlem brothel leans up against the bar; her eyes are expressionless.

The 1960s saw Arnold photographing politicians and film stars and ended with her working on a project entitled ‘Behind the Veil’. She spent four months travelling through Afghanistan and went on to photograph veiled women in Egypt and in harems throughout the United Arab Emirates.  And yes, I had no idea harems still existed in the 1970s.

Arnold moved to the UK in the 1970s and lived there till she died aged 99.  She worked until she said ‘That’s over. I can’t hold a camera any more’. The exhibition runs until January 7 2024; there are no plans for it to move to another gallery – if you are anywhere in Sussex, I urge you to visit it.