#bedfordphotography

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Inspiration du jour.... The Golden Age of Hollywood

My main source of inspiration is old pictures of movie stars from the 30’s to 80’s.

A couple of years ago, I got the chance to go to an exhibition the National Portrait Gallery called Glamour of the Gods.  It showed the massive presence promotional images of movie stars had in the “Golden Era” of Hollywood.  I am infatuated with the 1940’s heroines, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.  I am sure they would not like to be uttered in the same sentence together, but I find myself dawn to their personalities not only through their films, but the images created of them in their youth.  These powerful women, alike in spirit and determination, similar challenging lives are highened to the status of Legends for their work and imagery for a number of years in Hollywood.  Their success came from their talent, but also from the image their portrayed in the public.

In the Glamour of the Gods exhibition, they showed an early stage of “photoshopping”, on the beautiful Joan Crawford.  The before and after images show her amazing sun-kissed freckles disappear to a fresh dewy clear complexion.  It was amazing to see how they manipulated the images of these, pretty people to make them somehow other worldly or godlike beauties. 

  Like Joan, many of the Hollywood satrs came from very under privileged backgrounds.  Joan had a terrible upbringing, with child labour and sexual abuse.  Originally called Lucille Leseur, these images of Joan in the 20’s-40’s transformed her to the Ocsar winning Icon and household name she became.

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