![]() ![]() Doris Eaton survived heartbreak, economic peril, the murder of a sister, the death of five other siblings and her spouse, just for starters. I don’t usually think of my work as therapeutic, but in this case, it probably is. I think I am drawn to people who are undaunted by hardship. Tell me why you are interested biographically in people who overcome, who keep working against the odds and against various obstacles. "When Doris Eaton was 14, she changed her name and lied about her age to skirt child protective services and dance in the Ziegfeld Follies."- Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis Lauren Redniss Lauren Redniss, acclaimed author of the brilliant biography-in-collage Radioactive, delivers a stunning visual journey through the life of the last Ziegfeld girl, Doris Eaton Travis. ![]() We sat down recently for a discussion of her works and her process.Ĭentury Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies In the context of concern about global climate change, Redniss’ take on the history of weather is entertaining, but also salutary in what it tells us about human vulnerability to changes in the atmospheric membrane which supports life on earth. In her new book, the acclaimed Thunder & Lightning: Weather, Past, Present and Future, she is intrigued by how people have coped with, survived, or failed in extreme weather situations. Above all, she is fascinated with people who are survivors, people who endure and overcome.įor her imaginative engagement with past lives as well as the world around us, Redniss was recently awarded a MacArthur Grant, and while, in her modesty, she would eschew the label of genius, her work is an influential indicator toward new directions in visual biography. She is not interested in master narratives but idiosyncratic ways to visually enter the worlds of the people who interest her. Redniss takes an oblique approach, finding meanings in the scraps and details of the lives of her subjects-postcards, snapshots, diary entries and shopping lists as well as other physical evidence. Her visual biographies about the scientists Marie and Pierre Curie and Ziegfeld showgirl Doris Eaton Travis (who lived to be 106) are a delight to the eye, but also show a new way of revealing the contours and dimensions of past lives. Biography is constantly reinventing itself, adding dimension, depths and new approaches to the lives of emblematic people in past time.Īt the National Portrait Gallery’s recently created Center for Visual Biography we are exploring new innovative approaches to telling lives and to support scholarship about portrait biography.Īrtist and writer Lauren Redniss is among our advisors. It shows how character develops in childhood and then reveals itself to the public as the individual steps into the world as an adult. Biography is a way of linking private with public lives. In Renaissance Italy, biography was an adjunct to portrait painting as a way of recognition. Biography aims to record and commemorate-even celebrate-exemplary lives. Biography is one of the oldest forms of history. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |