OVENDEN, GRAHAM — Clementina Lady Hawarden

London, Academy Editions, London. 1974. Hardcover with dust jacket, 28.5cm. Book, A nice selection of period photographs by an accomplished designer/photographer of tableaux. Lady Clementina Hawarden was a well-regarded portrait photographer of the 1860s. Lewis Carroll praised and collected her pictures, which predated even the work of her better-known contemporary Julia Margaret Cameron, and art historians contend that her photographs influenced Whistler's portrait paintings. In 1859, Hawarden took up her camera. In Ireland, and later in London, she photographed her two oldest daughters masquerading in lavish costumes and acting out mysterious dramas. Though Hawarden and her daughters were, like most women of their day, bound by home and hearth, in these enigmatic pictures they imagine themselves transformed. After Hawarden's death at the age of forty-two, her work fell into oblivion until the 1930s, when the Victoria and Albert Museum inherited from her family 775 of her photographs. 11pp of carefully staged/posed dramatic ethereal photos. The spine is slightly lighter (sunning). All pages clean, white & well bound. Excellent/Very Good.