In this article, I trace the origins of the normalization of pornographic tropes as the new sexual ideal in contemporary visual culture to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century publicity photos of actresses and monarchs by examining one prominent transatlantic actress's collection of publicity photos, the Elizabeth Robins Papers at the Fales Library at New York University. As I show, around the turn of the twentieth century, a new standard of idealized feminine beauty was produced by the combination of two contradictory images of celebrity: the distant decorum of the monarch and the perceived erotic sexuality of the actress. The mass production of publicity photographs, which took the form of cartes-de-visite in the 1860s and cabinet photos in the 1870s, broadened the spectrum of sexuality by positioning these two quintessential celebrity types—the actress and the monarch—in relation to the tableau vivant and to existing and emerging tropes of portraiture. The image of the actress existed in relation to several mutually dependent discourses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the rise of photography in relation to other art forms; the rise of theatrical spectacle in relation to advertising, consumerism, and fashion; the rise of women's public role in relation to sexuality, the body, and beauty culture; and the paradoxical democratization of celebrity culture as related to the monarchy. All of these factors center on a figure who lived so vividly in the public imaginary that she could be found in multiple spaces: on the stage, in stationers’ shops, on postcards, in newspapers, in photograph albums.
This article situates the development of this contradictory conceptualization of femininity in relation to the history of photography and to recent work on women in the theatre and theatrical celebrity—a concept that “has scarcely begun to be addressed,” despite leaving behind “many forms of material evidence: plays, anecdotes, photographs, cartoons, programmes, reviews, portraits and costumes.”Footnote 1 From the diverse range of material evidence of theatrical celebrity, I examine one particular actress's collection of publicity photos. Because Elizabeth Robins (1862–1952) acted in Boston, New York, and London, her archive of publicity photos bears witness to specific transatlantic exchange networks. By the time Robins, an American, moved to London in 1888, she had already played three hundred roles.Footnote 2 She played the first Hedda Gabler in London on 20 April 1891 (Oscar Wilde asked for a stall and praised her performance),Footnote 3 thus successfully bringing Ibsen, the most transformative figure in modern drama, to England. As Robins said, “Without the help of the stage the world would not have had an Ibsen to celebrate; and without Ibsen the world would not have had the stage as it became after his plays were acted.”Footnote 4 Robins also produced the show with Marion Lea, thus making her one of the first successful female theatre directors.Footnote 5
The nearly one hundred linear feet of material in the Elizabeth Robins Papers bears witness to the everyday life and business of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theatre: the collection ranges from diaries and correspondence to photographic material to scrapbooks to business records to typescripts of Ibsen plays (with annotations by Henry James and William Archer) to material relating to her 1907 suffrage play, Votes for Women! My methodology draws on recent work in book history that uses a case study approach to challenge generally held views about a topic or period by examining the material properties and circulation of specific objects.
An examination of more than five hundred photographs in the Elizabeth Robins collection reveals who and what authorized the publicity photo as a genre and the specific social and cultural networks in which these photographs circulated. Photos in the Robins collection show the specific paratextual details that are often excluded from photographic reproductions, such as studio stamps, signatures, and advertising features that point to specific moments of legitimation and transatlantic exchange. Specific details, such as the photographer's stamp and royal insignia, give us valuable information about who authorized the image and how this authorization interacts with the body of the image, while material traces on the photographs show evidence of social connections and networks, such as the signed cards from the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Ultimately, reading the photos within the context of a private collection enables us to compare the overlapping, competing, and often contradictory visual encodings seen in a range of images in order to understand how publicity photos contributed to new ideals of female beauty in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultural imaginaries.
Publicity photos, which were, and still are, an important part of the image of the actress, encapsulate the tensions inherent in representing an actress as socially acceptable, sexually desirable, and professionally competent. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, it was taboo for a woman's image, even images of high art such as the Venus de’ Medici,Footnote 6 to be reproduced and circulated on a mass scale, even during the period when the circulation of the image of one particular woman, Queen Victoria, set off the carte-de-visite craze. Despite this taboo, it was the mass consumption of publicity photos, sparked by the popularity of the photo of the queen, that normalized the image of the actress—a woman engaged in a career with latent associations of prostitution and pornography—into a socially acceptable figure of glamour. Dating back to at least the time of the classical Greek auletrides, or flute girls,Footnote 7 actresses have been associated with prostitutes in the cultural imaginary because of their status as public women and their exclusive role as “sexually evocative components of performance,” to borrow a phrase from Tracy C. Davis.Footnote 8 Both the proximity of theatre districts to zones of prostitution and theatre's tendency to draw on tropes of pornography (and vice versa) further reinforced sexual innuendo and equivocation.Footnote 9
Yet despite these erotic associations, shops displayed actresses’ publicity photos next to photos of monarchs, politicians, writers, and even the spouses of writers. Writing to her husband about her photograph's placement in “Macmichael's window,” Mrs. Carlyle noted:
It proves the interest, or curiosity, you [Thomas Carlyle] excite; for being neither a ‘distinguished authoress’, nor a ‘celebrated murderess’, nor an actress, nor a ‘Skittles’ (the four classes of women promoted to the shop-windows), it can only be as Mrs Carlyle that they offer me for sale.Footnote 10
The mass production of publicity photos meant that images circulated beyond the theatre: the actress lived not only onstage but also next to photographs of the queen or Mrs. Carlyle. The figure of the actress thus entered a semiotic economy of images beyond the theatre district, thus detracting from direct associations between actresses and prostitutes. I do not mean to suggest that Victorian spectators did not associate actresses with prostitutes as they walked the West End, or that they did not think about actresses when looking at erotica or pornography; instead, I want to problematize the immediate and direct association of actresses with prostitutes and pornography based on geographical proximity by
1. showing how the monarchy legitimated the new medium of photography;
2. examining the impact of specific patterns of circulation; and
3. showing how publicity photos draw upon conventions of high portraiture and the tableau vivant.
While the mass consumption, production, and circulation of the publicity photograph may have contributed to the further stigmatization of an already taboo profession, these practices ultimately normalized the image of the actress into a figure who would come to serve as the standard of beauty for women, even as this image retained its latent erotic encodings. The Robins collection points to very few direct connections among prostitution, pornography, and the actress, but it does bear witness to the range of latent erotic conventions and tropes that contributed to a contradictory perception of female sexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The indirect and latent nature of these erotic encodings is my focus here.
Legitimating the New Medium
UK census figures point to the rapid rise of photography after its invention in 1839, made possible by technological advances such as the use of procession glass instead of silvered copper plate in 1848; the perfection of Frederick Scott Archer's wet collodion process, which was twenty times faster than the daguerreotype, in 1851; and the relaxation of William Henry Fox Talbot's calotype patent in 1852.Footnote 11 The 1841 UK census, taken just two years after the invention of photography, recorded only three portrait establishments and did not list photography as a profession. By 1851, the census included fifty-one photographers, two of whom were women, and twelve portrait establishments. By 1861, London boasted more than two hundred portrait establishments and 2,879 photographers, 204 of whom were women. Five years later, London had 284 portrait studios, and the owners of several of these were successful enough to own multiple stores,Footnote 12 such as Elliott and Fry Photographers or Russell + Sons, both of which produced a significant number of photos in the Robins collection.
Queen Victoria, who was an avid collector of photographs, owned over a hundred thousand photographs in a multitude of royal photo albums.Footnote 13 The queen and Prince Albert built a darkroom at Windsor Castle and received lessons from Dr. E. Becker, Prince Albert's librarian. In January 1853, Becker became a founding member of the Photographic Society;Footnote 14 just four months later, Victoria and Albert became patrons. The Amateur Photographic Association, founded in September 1861, included the Prince of Wales as president and counted the Archbishop of York, various peers, fellows of the Royal Society, and the chief cashier of the Bank of England among its members.Footnote 15
The monarchy's support helped legitimize the new medium. It was not until the “new photography” of the 1920s and 1930s associated with Alexander Rodchenko, Man Ray, and László Maholy-Nagy that photography became recognized as an avant-garde art form, and even today it does not receive the same esteem as painting or sculpture. Photography attempted to legitimate itself by relying on traditional subject matter and conventions of high art, as demonstrated by Fox Talbot's “Introductory Remarks” (1844) to his book of photographs, The Pencil of Nature, which draws upon conventions of realism, naturalism, and idealism to explain photographs as “impressed by Nature's hand” because of photography's play with light and shadow.Footnote 16 While photography sought legitimation by appealing to traditional art forms, it also received approval from the monarchy. The royal family's zeal for photography sparked the carte-de-visite craze of the 1860s, thus legitimating the first wave of mass-market portraiture consumption.
The carte-de-visite, which was patented by Parisian photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in 1854, was a full-length portrait 5.7 cm × 9 cm (ca. 2.2 in. × 3.5 in.) photo mounted on cardboard. Its name referred to the fact that it was the size of a visiting card. Disdéri published photographs of the French imperial family as cartes-de-visite, which led to the mass popularization of the medium. The carte-de-visite craze reached England when J. E. Mayall, a well-respected portrait photographer, published fourteen cartes-de-visite of the royal family entitled “Royal Album.” By the 1860s, the production of cartes-de-visite had reached the millions.Footnote 17 Ten thousand was a typical run for a famous person's carte-de-visite, Footnote 18 and stationers’ shops sold hundreds of thousands of copies of the queen's portrait. The most popular carte-de-visite was a photo of Alexandra, Princess of Wales, carrying her baby on her back in 1867, which sold three hundred thousand copies.Footnote 19 The larger cabinet card (4.25 in. × 6.5 in.) was introduced in 1866 and rose in popularity during the 1870s, eventually replacing the carte-de-visite by the 1880s. Because they offered nearly four times the image area of cartes-de-visite, cabinet cards had more space for props, group photographs, and backgrounds.Footnote 20
The carte-de-visite, the cabinet card, and especially the postcard became the predominant formats for printing images of the royal family, celebrities, and erotica alike. Photography transformed pornography from a primarily textual to a predominantly visual experience during the same period that the monarchy was legitimating the new technology. According to Lynn Hunt, from approximately 1500 to 1800, “pornography was most often a vehicle for using the shock of sex to criticize religious and political authorities.”Footnote 21 Although pornographic texts and novels had long drawn upon techniques of realism, photography made possible the circulation, consumption, and collection of realistically detailed and visually explicit sexual material on a mass scale.Footnote 22 Between 1834 and 1880, for example, the Society for the Suppression of Vice confiscated 385,000 prints and photos (visual matter), compared to 80,000 books and pamphlets, 28,000 sheets of obscene songs and circulars, stereoscopes and copper plates, and five tons of “other printed matter.”Footnote 23
By the 1860s, what had once served as a mode of political attack now used the same medium of representation—photographic paper—as did images of the symbolic and moral leader of the nation, the queen. The price of the carte-de-visite photograph of the queen was remarkably similar to that of pornographic stereographs (cards with pornographic images viewable as 3-D); they both could be purchased for from around 1 shilling 6 pence to 3 shillings around 1860.Footnote 24 Whereas nude depictions of women were once restricted to high-art paintings and sculptures and could thus be legitimized by virtue of their form, the camera democratized the distribution of images and brought together the seemingly disparate realms of monarchy and pornography. Photography thus ushered in a new form of celebrity culture whereby both the inaccessible (the monarch) and the sexually forbidden (pornography) were available for consumption in realistic detail on a mass-market scale.
Gendered contradictions abounded. On the one hand, high-portraiture artist Julia Margaret Cameron commented that “no woman should ever allow herself to be photographed between the ages of 18 and 90.”Footnote 25 On the other hand, a member of Queen Victoria's household wrote, “It is quite a weakness of hers to be photographed in every possible condition of her daily life. Sitting in her donkey chair, dangling [sic] the latest new baby, chatting in her private sitting-room among her daughters, working at her writing-table, or breakfasting in the open air … the Queen's photographer is always to be sent for.”Footnote 26 The Honorable Eleanor Stanley, one of Queen Victoria's ladies in waiting, similarly wrote on 24 November 1860: “I have been writing to all the fine ladies in London for their and their husbands’ photographs, for the Queen. I believe the Queen could be bought and sold for a photograph.”Footnote 27 On the surface, this quotation merely illustrates Queen Victoria's love of photographs, which she loved so much that she would sell herself for them. But this statement also draws our attention to the fact that the infinitely reproducible image of the queen became the metonymic substitute for her body, which was now, in language echoing that of prostitution, available for sale, trade, and exchange.
The queen's image was elsewhere reduced to an advertising prop. English photographers aggressively marketed their material by incorporating references to and symbols of the monarchy into the visual frame of the photograph. As the Elizabeth Robins archive shows, English photographers created advertising copy within the visual frame of the photograph in order to present themselves as quasi-official photographers for royalty and nobility. Russell + Sons photographers, established in 1852, claimed their legitimacy on the back of Robins's publicity photos through a series of references to the monarchy. The front of the card advertised that the company photographed the queen, and the back noted that they also photographed “H.R.H the Prince of Wales and H.R.H the Princess of Wales”; “Their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of York, Edinburgh, Connaught and Cambridge”; and the “Duchesses of York, Edinburgh, Connaught & Teck,” in addition to an array of European royals.Footnote 28
Instead of listing the royal families as Russell + Sons does, another studio, W. & D. Downey, placed ten seals on the back of their photographs, claiming that they served as “Photographers by Special Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen and to the Imperial & Royal Families of Europe.”Footnote 29 Elliott and Fry photographers, who shot publicity photographs of Robins for Little Lord Fauntleroy (1889),Footnote 30The American (1891),Footnote 31The Trumpet Call (1891–2),Footnote 32The Master Builder (1893),Footnote 33 and Eleanor (1902),Footnote 34 and who also photographed John Ruskin,Footnote 35 similarly placed the caption “Photographers to H.M. The Queen” in the center bottom margin of each photograph. The queen's legacy as the stamp of photographic authority remained even after her death in 1901; a Bassano Company logo on a 1902 photo reads, “By Royal Warrant; Messrs Bassano; Photographers to the Late Queen Victoria.”Footnote 36 The specific mention of the monarch thus authorizes the content of each photograph through a rhetoric of self-created advertising that permits its subject to share space with the queen.
In these images, the actress occupies more visual space than the queen, who becomes reduced to supporting text. While a desire to own the image of the actress would most likely motivate the person who purchased a publicity photo, the mention of the queen seemingly legitimated not only the subject matter itself but also the photographic studio and the medium of photography. Visually subordinated to the actress, the photographer's connection to the queen nevertheless seemed to authorize the entire apparatus of photography, even as moral authorities attempted to regulate the distribution of images to the masses and the reproduction of pornographic images was on the rise.
The London Stereoscopic Co.y., which shot photographs of Robins for Little Lord Fauntleroy, similarly boasted that they were “Photographers to the Royal family.” The back of the photograph contained the sentence “Copies of this photograph may always be obtained. Enlargements made to Life size and finished in Oil, Water Colours or Carbon.” The implication was that the image of Elizabeth Robins could be transformed into a larger and more legitimately artistic medium. This text was placed just above “Free Lessons in Photography” with the nota bene that amateurs could reserve one of the company's darkrooms or studios.Footnote 37 The enlargement option was also available for Mrs. Patrick Campbell's photographs, courtesy of Martin & Sallow's studio, located in the heart of the theatre district at 416 Strand, London, W.C.: “This picture can be enlarged to any size in permanent carbon or on opal. Copies may be had.”Footnote 38 Photographers aggressively used their own medium to generate business, implicitly connecting their celebrity subjects—actresses, actors, authors—to the royalty by virtue of the shared visual space of photograph and accompanying border. Both queen and actress are reduced to brand names, to advertising props. The paratextual framing of these photographs indicates that studios received their authority first from the queen; second from their professional awards (the London Stereoscopic Co.y. listed prize medals it had won in London, Paris, Dublin, Vienna, Berlin, New York, Philadelphia, Sydney, and Melbourne); third through the subject of the photograph (here, the actress); and finally by extending participation in the artistic community to the amateur photographer.
The Marks of Circulation
The Robins collection also provides evidence of specific patterns of circulation beyond immediate geographical locations. Studios in the United States that produced photographs for Robins at some point in her career include Dana, at the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue, New York; Falk, at 949 Broadway, New York; and Ritz & Hastings, at 147 Tremont Street, Boston.Footnote 39 Other studios in the Robins Papers include Alex Bassano, 25 Old Bond Street, London; Sarony, 680 Broadway, New York; Fredericks, 770 Broadway, New York; and Max Platz in Chicago.Footnote 40 The backs of photographs produced in the United States did not legitimate their studios by referring to royalty as their English counterparts did, thus suggesting by comparison the lack of any single legitimating body. Although the cards resemble English ones in that they advertise the company's address on the front, the backs of most American cards are generally blank, as are 1883 Falk cardsFootnote 41 and the Aime Thompson cards of Robins in Hedda Gabler from ca. 1898.Footnote 42 Instead of advertising its royal clientele, Ritz & Hastings provides practical instructions about how to find its studio: “Up one flight” and “studio connected by Elevator.” The back of Dana cards merely have Dana underlined in large, diagonal script, and the address in capitalized Gothic font.
A portrait of Samuel Clemens with the caption “S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)” captures the author from a side angle, looking serious yet with a slight twinkle in his eye. The photograph was taken by Falk on Broadway but is marked by a purple circular stamp that reads “Russell Brothers, Boston, 126 Tremont St.” on the back,Footnote 43 possibly indicating that a store or studio had bought the card in New York and resold it, using the stamp to solidify the Russell Brothers brand. Samuel Clemens has thus thrice been “branded”: through his identifying caption, through Falk, and through Russell Brothers. Likewise, photographs of Ellen Terry and of HRH Princess Alexandra, taken by Alex Bassano, a well-known English photographer, also made their way to Boston, as indicated by the Russell Brothers stamp in the bottom right corner on the backs of the cards.Footnote 44 The marketing assumption is that a particular celebrity would become associated with a particular store in the minds of consumers, and consumers would return to that store to find similar items. As the photos spread and were traded, however, the specificity associated with each brand decreased, whereas the celebrity's popularity increased, circulated, and became normalized.
Technological advances in postal delivery and printing on both sides of the Atlantic made such widespread branding possible. Advances in the postal system assisted the mass circulation of images. By 1840, Great Britain had introduced the penny post, and by 1870, the nation had adopted the half-rate for postcards, following the introduction of the Correspondenz-Karte in Austria in 1869.Footnote 45 By 1899, Great Britain, population 38.5 million, had produced over fourteen million postcards.Footnote 46 Developments in the post coincided with the mass production of newspapers, periodicals, and other printed matter and the increased literacy spurred by the 1870 Elementary Education Act in England. Following the success of postcards in Europe, the United States introduced them in 1873. According to the United States Postal Service, “customers bought 31 million postal cards by June 30, 1873, and more than 64 million by the end of September.”Footnote 47 The rise of cheap printing and increased literacy thus provided opportunities for businesses to market their goods whenever possible. The standardization of format and pricing meant that postcards of all types of people—royalty, politicians, actresses, writers—were sent through the mail, as Tracy C. Davis notes:
The reduction to a regular format, the eight-by-thirteen-centimeter postcard, with a point of sale common to similar postcards of politicians, royalty, authors, and artists, suggests that the medium eliminated the stigma of the actress's profession. But at the same time, erotic periodicals printed actresses’ images (probably unauthorized but nonetheless flagrant) and French postcards flowed into Britain, causing erotic visual encodings to become more widely understood than ever.Footnote 48
The “realistic” capturing of an actress on photographic paper suggests a normalization of that image. As photos of celebrities entered the world of commerce and circulated, those images became part of the material culture of everyday life. The queen's image could be either treasured or discarded as ephemera along with the daily paper; and the image of Elizabeth Robins, the actress who brought Ibsen to London and who fought for women's voting rights with Emmeline Pankhurst, was placed on a cigarette card.
The cards were sent, traded, and collected, making their way into collectors’ albums, as the signed cards to Elizabeth Robins attest.Footnote 49 For example, an 1890 photograph shows actor Johann Diemer dressed and seated as a king in a typical Victorian setting between columns and an elaborately painted floral background.Footnote 50 He wears a dark cape that covers his entire body except for his right arm, which is exposed from elbow to wrist. The fringe at the end of his robes creates a dark shadow between his robe and his boot. He wears a crown and looks up into the upper right corner of the photograph. The photograph has dark black borders, creating a masculine, authoritative frame and includes this caption in gray text: “Passionsspiel Oberammergau Original Aufnahme 1890” (Oberammergau Passion Play, original photo, 1890; a longtime Choragus, he'd played Herod that year). A different photograph of Diemer appears in the album of Charles Taylor, master of St. John's College, Cambridge, from 1881 to 1908—just one example of how publicity photographs ended up in a wide range of hands and albums.Footnote 51
More broadly, the rise of the celebrity publicity photograph initiated a widespread change in practices of sharing and collecting images. The production and collection of celebrity photos marked the beginning of an unprecedented mass phenomenon that changed all subsequent modes of image consumption. Think of how we consume images today, from those that appear on television news to those we see on Facebook to pictures of friends to pornographic images. The viewing practices for each of these types of image involves sifting through a vast quantity of material and then reading, viewing, saving, forwarding, or deleting the content through patterns of consumption and storage that are unique to the individual viewer. If transatlantic trade and branding suggests the normalization of the production and consumption of photographic images, then collecting photos in albums implies privatization, internalization, and reflection whereby the spectator may view the image as many times as she desires, and in whatever setting she chooses, by privately collecting publicly accessible information.
If postcards that portray images (ranging from those of public figures to erotica) easily circulated on a mass scale, what tropes visually conveyed the content of their messages? If the medium (photography), format (postcard photo), and modes of distribution (through the post, for sale in stores, and through trade) are equivalent for images of monarchs, politicians, writers, actresses, and erotica, then the medium is not the message. So what tropes signal the boundaries of social distinction? What recognizable visual signals do the photographs use to categorize each person?
Composing the Ideal Beauty
Publicity photos in the Elizabeth Robins collection show two things: (1) how the solidity or fluidity of the physical body signals social status and gender; and (2) how this bodily movement, or lack thereof, reflects the tropes of high portraiture or the tableau vivant. In the Robins collection, there is a marked difference in fluidity of form between the high-portraiture photographs reminiscent of those taken by Julia Margaret Cameron and the publicity photographs of actresses staged as tableaux vivants. Cameron usually shot only the head and shoulders, to portray intellect and heroism in her famous sitters, rather than full-bodied figures of actresses.Footnote 52 To create this serious and memorializing effect, her photographs drew upon portrait conventions that used bodily characteristics to represent idealistically a person's virtue.
Publicity photos of male Victorian notables such as Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Alfred, Lord TennysonFootnote 53 all draw on traditional tropes of portraiture: they are photographed in profile from the waist up, and they are looking either right or left. Few accessories appear in such photographs; one might see a polka dot bowtie, as in the case of Broadway actor Charles Coghlan,Footnote 54 or a black tie with diagonal white bars, as in the case of Henry Irving.Footnote 55 Even actor Tommaso Salvini, who played Othello against Edwin Booth's Iago in 1886, was photographed from the waist up, despite the fact that he is wearing a toga that reveals parts of his bare chest.Footnote 56
The photograph of Queen Victoria similarly drew upon portrait conventions of stillness and fullness associated with the impression of male-gendered seriousness and respectability. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was likewise portrayed from the waist up in a copy of a daguerreotype that was photographed by Elliot & Fry and stamped by Russell Brothers, suggesting that a portrait's decorum was dictated as much by professional success and social status as by gender.Footnote 57 In Queen Victoria's photograph (Fig. 1), one ringed hand holds a handkerchief, a visual convention actresses commonly used. Her dress, made of black, smooth, impenetrable material, covers her lap, over which lies what appears to be an overskirt of white, lacey, sheer material with a design of vines and flowers. The queen and her voluminous veil fill the majority of the frame and cover most of the chair. Her photograph is similar to the visual style of male portraits in that she is photographed only from the waist up and occupies her chair completely. But certain aspects of the photo, such as her lace veil and her strand of pearls, echo the details seen in publicity photographs of actresses. The caption reads “Her Majesty the Queen” in capital letters under the photo alongside the Alex Bassano seal. The Russell Brothers stamp is on the back.Footnote 58 The symbolic body of the queen, like that of Mark Twain, has been stamped by the advertiser and was owned by Elizabeth Robins.
Queen Victoria, Front and Back of Photograph, Elizabeth Robins Papers, Series IX, Subseries B, Album 4, #311. Courtesy of the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
In contrast to this stillness reminiscent of high-portraiture conventions, the publicity photographs of many actresses in Robins's collection draw upon the conventions of the tableau vivant, indicating an attempt to render in realistic detail the live action of the stage in a still photograph. The conventions of the tableau vivant overlapped with conventions of contemporary erotic postcards, such as the fluid body, the playful gaze, and the use of props and fabric to illustrate texture and detail. Whereas pornography reveals body parts, leaving very little (if any) room for the imagination, erotica relies on symbols, props, forms, gazes, and bodily positions that do leave room.Footnote 59 Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century erotic postcards depended heavily on props and symbols, partial states of undress, and imaginative interpretations. Pornographic images, by contrast, emphasize acts of sexual intercourse between (most often) completely nude women and men, or portray nude women with a clear focus on the genitalia, and use few props.Footnote 60
Several key codes (the playful gaze, various states of undress, and the use and organization of props) semiotically define the visual field of the nineteenth-century erotic postcard, which Allison Pease helpfully defines as one in which a nude or seminude woman is “gazing playfully at the camera or wistfully into the unknown (though the variety of poses is not limited and sometimes features a male partner), represent[ing] the organization into visibility of the sexual fantasy.”Footnote 61 Nineteenth-century erotic photographs show women in various states of nudity: sometimes alone, sometimes with other women or men, but very often with props, such as teacups, cigarettes, swords, perfume bottles, mirrors, garters, shoes, flowers, books, birds, swings, garlands, bracelets, pearls, rings, violins, horns, stars, bicycles, horses, and fake moons symbolizing the buttocks.Footnote 62 And yet props such as statues and plants also feature heavily in all forms of Victorian portrait photographs, such as the photograph of the “Honorable M.R. Waite, Chief Justice of the U.S.”Footnote 63 in the Robins collection, who was portrayed against a background of plants, columns, and floral paintings.
Publicity photographs of actresses, though clearly not pornographic, could be read as erotic because they rely on some conventions of erotica. They draw upon erotic tropes that allowed spectators to read the figure of the actress back into an erotic context. Nineteenth-century erotic photographs differ from photographs of actresses in the Robins collection largely through the bodily poses (in the full or partial exposing of breasts, pubic areas, and legs), the use of props (in the emphasis on garters or the use of fabric to hint at nudity), the representation of taboo acts (such as smoking, engaging in lesbian activity, and having encounters with men), and in the narrative displays of various sexual acts (for example, of women dressing and undressing). The semiotic similarity of erotic photographs and photographs of actresses emerges in relation to the organization of visual space through an emphasis on fabric, the gaze, and nontraditional body positioning. In both cases, these give the impression that “live” scenes have been reproduced as if in tableaux vivants.
Many erotic photographs portray women in partial states of undress. Dresses are often pushed down to reveal the breast and pushed up to reveal a thigh with elaborately textured garters and tights covering certain parts of the leg but revealing others. In photographs that involve erotic undressing, for example, a woman might lift her dress to reveal part of her thigh, or lie down in bed showing a fully exposed leg. Other photographs exhibit the area of the leg from the knee down. Swaths of fabric cover the thigh portion, such as in one photo where a woman wearing buckled shoes is sitting on a man's lap as he puts a glass to her lips as in a banqueting scene while she looks into the distance. In another undressing photo, a bare-breasted woman kneels to tie her boot in front of elaborate drapery. In the next pose, again in front of the drapery, she is seated on top of the table undressed but covered by a sheet from the waist down, evocative of nudity underneath and sexual encounters to come.
Although most actresses are fully clothed in their publicity photographs, the photos nevertheless draw upon tropes of erotic photographs through an emphasis on fabric, the use of props or details, the playful or interested gaze, and the nontraditional posturing that is a necessary feature of photographing “live” scenes from plays. Similar to certain aspects of erotic photographs, Elizabeth Robins's photo series from her performance in Mrs. Lessingham (1894), for example, underscores the extent to which camera angles and framing can emphasize details (fabric, material, props, shoes, framing, body placement, gaze) that can be interpreted as erotic signifiers based on whether or not a high heel is exposed; what part of the embroidered garment is shown; whether the hands are draped off the side of the couch or placed in her lap; whether the dress material outlines her breasts or formlessly drapes to conceal the curves of her body.Footnote 64 As the character Mrs. Lessingham, a fallen woman who eventually commits suicide, Robins enacts a scene from a play as she reclines on a couch with a pillow under her shoulder (Fig. 2).Footnote 65 She is positioned slightly off the couch with her right leg lightly crossed over her left. Only the tip of what appears to be a satin dress shoe is visible under folds of a light-colored ball gown that has delicately flowered embroidery at the hem. Her right hand is loosely draped in her lap, while the left hand limply hangs off the couch with her fingers curled so that they almost, but not quite, touch the floor. Her head is fully thrown back. The background shows typical Victorian scenery: fake painted palm trees, ornate furniture. On the ground is a small vial, positioned to look as if it has accidentally slipped from her hand. Through the use of nontraditional portraiture and open body posture, the organization of props, and the attention to costume details, such as the shoe, this photograph and the ones that follow it resemble, in some respects, erotic photographs.
Elizabeth Robins as Mrs. Lessingham, Front and Back of Photograph, Elizabeth Robins Papers, Series IX, Subseries A, Album 1, #52. Courtesy of the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
The next two photos as organized in the album show Robins again as Mrs. Lessingham in a different scene.Footnote 66 She stands upright and wears the same light-colored ball gown, but this time the photographs are shot from behind as she looks over her shoulder. Her hair is in a loose knot, and slight curls frame her face. The notorious palm trees make another appearance. A lounge chair with fringe at the bottom serves as another prop; she holds both the chair and a handkerchief with one hand. We see only her neck, her face, and parts of her arm from the elbow down; the rest of her body is covered by a loosely flowing dress that does not reveal the form of her body.
In the following two photos, Robins is seated in the same dress, but from this angle it reveals her form (Fig. 3). The square neckline lies several inches above the bust line and does not reveal cleavage.Footnote 67 The shot emphasizes the embroidery from the first photo, and once again highlights just the tip of one white satin shoe. Robins sits on a divan with a pillow in the corner, holding what appears to be a cigar, and looks into the corner. The two photos after those again show Robins reclined on the sofa, but here the angle reveals that her shoe has a high heel and her beringed hand holds a handkerchief (Fig. 4).Footnote 68 The other hand rests on her lap, while the pillow that was placed next to her in the previous image as a prop is now behind her head. She is posed halfway off the couch in the same dress, and the folds of the fabric outline her breast.
Elizabeth Robins as Mrs. Lessingham, Elizabeth Robins Papers, Series IX, Subseries A, Album 1, #56. Courtesy of the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
Elizabeth Robins as Mrs. Lessingham, Elizabeth Robins Papers, Series IX, Subseries A, Album 1, #58. Courtesy of the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
The Mrs. Lessingham photographs show the inherent tension within tableau vivant conventions that attempt to capture in a photograph what was meant to look like a live moment from the stage. In contrast to the portraits of monarchs and writers that primarily draw on tropes from portrait paintings, photographs of an actress doing her job capture the live moment and transfer this vivacity into a semiotics of eroticism. The distinction emphasizes the caught-in-the-act voyeurism of the audience, whereas the monarch and writer photographs are the result of a subject who is sitting consensually, even commandingly, for a photo.
But how do such visual erotic codes translate into specific moments of comparison in images of actresses and monarchs? A comparison of the publicity photos of Princess AlexandraFootnote 69 and Elizabeth Robins's Hedda Gabler seriesFootnote 70 reveals that a stiff versus fluid body and a stolid versus playful gaze contribute to an impression of respectability or eroticism, respectively. Curiously, the lowest neckline in the Robins collection belongs to a garment worn by the Princess of Wales (Fig. 5). She sits upright, looking to the right, wearing a crown, and modeling a drop necklace of diamonds that almost extends into her cleavage. She wears long black gloves, and her short-sleeved, off-the-shoulder dress has stars that extend from the shoulders across her breast in a V-shape, centering on the cleavage and making a line down the waist. She wears a choker of diamonds with the necklace and a long veil behind her crown. Although she appears to be narrow-waisted and curvy, very little in this photograph signals sexuality. The impression of poise and grandeur is created by the princess's still, direct gaze, her erect and composed posture, and the apparent solidity of her attire that denies a reading of certain details that otherwise might be conceived as erotic (the lower neckline, the sheer veil behind her head, the diamond necklace accentuating her décolletage, the stars making a pattern that leads the eye to the center of her cleavage). Instead, the overall effect is one of dignity.
Alexandra, the princess of Wales, Front and Back of Photograph, Elizabeth Robins Papers, Series IX, Subseries B, Album 2, #2. Courtesy of the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
By contrast, the photos of Robins purportedly performing in Hedda Gabbler show her in a variety of poses that, taken out of context, could be considered sultry because of her playful gaze, her fluid body postures, and the drapey fabrics of her clothing. The photos show Robins popping out of curtains, wearing a feather boa, and exposing only one shoe (Fig. 6). A close-up reveals Robins with half-closed eyes gazing lustily into the camera (Fig. 7). The textured blacks and grays of the feathery boa surround her skin, contrasting with her pale arm, neck, and face and merging into the curls of her hair and the folds of her dress so that it is difficult to tell where the boa ends and the curls and her dress begin. Unlike other elaborate Victorian backgrounds that feature palm trees, statues, or furniture, the background of these photos is monochromatic, further drawing attention to Robins herself. Yet this is also the play for which Robins was praised “as an intellectual actress of the highest order”Footnote 71 and the one for which The Whitehall Review commended Robins for her “artistic venture.”Footnote 72
Elizabeth Robins as Hedda Gabler, Front and Back of Photograph, Elizabeth Robins Papers, Series IX, Subseries A, Album 1, #81. Courtesy of the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
Elizabeth Robins as Hedda Gabler, Elizabeth Robins Papers, Series IX, Subseries A, Album 1, #86. Courtesy of the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
Robins received reviews not only for her intellectual acting in Hedda Gabbler but also for her dress selection:
The dresses in Hedda Gabler are not by any means magnificent, but they are wonderfully well chosen. Miss Robins, who plays the title-rôle, first wears a soft grey cloth, opening over a fourreau of rose silk with a deep frill around the throat, and rose colour flashing out through the laces. This seems especially in keeping with her brilliantly expressive face. The second gown is of royal-blue velvet, lacing in front and clinging to her figure. The graceful lines are only broken by a gold girdle, and bands of yellow feather trimming border the neck and wrists.Footnote 73
The review emphasizes how the colors, materials, and design of Robins's costumes (“soft grey cloth,” “rose silk,” “deep frill,” “royal-blue velvet,” “gold girdle,” “bands of yellow feather trimming”) draw attention to and frame her body (“around the throat,” “in keeping with her brilliantly expressive face,” “lacing in front of and clinging to her figure,” “border the neck and wrists”). After Hedda debuted in London, Robins's evening gown and feather boa “became the rage of fashionable women throughout the city.”Footnote 74 Reviews reported on the outfits actresses wore on the stage, and bourgeoisie women modeled their personal style after the fashion of the theatre. The increasing visibility of the actress resulted in a gradual decrease in the stigmatization associated with the use of “paint.”Footnote 75 By the end of World War I, women were wearing makeup, something that only actresses and prostitutes had done just a few short years earlier. Theatres such as the Haymarket, Criterion, and St. James's hired couture dressmakers who turned actresses into “living mannequins” and the theatre into an important venue for developments in fashion.Footnote 76 Actresses whose images appeared in windows, mail-order catalogs, and advertisements, as was the case with Lilly Langtry and Adelina Patti, who appeared in cosmetics advertisements as early as the 1880s, became the new standard of beauty. They were “no longer seen as women of questionable morality, but rather as celebrities and stars.”Footnote 77
A 1901 article from The Cosmopolitan, “What Men Like in Women” claimed that although there is no absolute standard for ideal feminine beauty, “what most appeals to the majority of men is a winsome face, a face that is very human in its suggestions—mobile, expressive, sympathetic, and made piquant by just the faintest bit of archness.” The second key attribute a woman should have is “grace,” because “[a]wkwardness in a woman is very hard to overlook.”Footnote 78The Cosmopolitan defined female beauty in terms of a lively fluidity akin to the expressiveness of the actress who wears her emotions on her face in a state of graceful movement. Paradoxically, photographs cemented the “live” element of the actress as responsive and graceful by capturing facial features that privileged the playful, erotic gaze. By 1901, the two qualities affiliated with erotic postcards—mobility of facial expression and gracefulness of body—had become the new standardized ideal for middle-class female beauty. Indeed, the third favorable quality endorsed by the writer of “What Men Want in Women” is true “responsiveness”: the quality associated with actresses reacting to situations onstage.
Conclusion
The photographs in the Elizabeth Robins Papers show how visual tropes in publicity photographs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to a spectrum of sexuality that indirectly linked the actress to erotica and increasingly became the new norm of feminine beauty. Some photographs in the Robins collection resemble typical respectable Victorian portraits. Others show Robins acting out her parts. Still others show actresses looking serious or playful. What is striking, however, is how few direct connections exist between photographs of actresses and pornographic, or even erotic, photographs. Out of the entire collection of more than five hundred photographs, I saw only two that portrayed “lesbian scenes” or “sister scenes”: one was a photo of Kate Gurney and Alma Stuart StanleyFootnote 79 and the other depicted a cross-dressing Clara Jecks.Footnote 80 But indirect connections between actresses and erotic photographs abound through the manipulation of props, adherence to or departure from portraiture conventions, and the fluidity of bodily postures and gazes that creates an imaginative space for the viewer to read the actress back into an erotic scenario.
In the “Ithaca” episode of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom invites Stephen Dedalus into his house. As the two characters sit in Bloom's kitchen, the third-person narrator lists the contents of Bloom's drawer, which include, among other things, a copybook; letters from Milly, his daughter, and Martha Clifford, his potentially adulterous fling; “two partly uncoiled rubber preservatives with reserve pockets, purchased by post” (condoms);Footnote 81 “2 erotic postcards showing a) buccal coition […] b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, eyes abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased by post”;Footnote 82 and two photographs. Interestingly, these photographs are of an actress and a monarch, described as “2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of Maud Branscombe, actress and professional beauty.”Footnote 83 Scattered among various personal and sexual items in Bloom's drawer, the actress and the queen are rendered equivalent alongside erotica as reproducible images that could be collected and consumed.
The widespread popularity of photography made it possible for individuals, such as the fictional character Leopold Bloom, to collect publicity photos for personal consumption. Publicity photos of actresses, monarchs, and erotica were bought, sold, traded, exchanged, circulated, collected, and fictionally represented in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.Footnote 84 The collection and circulation of these images thus contributed to an imaginative conception of the actress that extended beyond the local geography of the theatre district. Although imagistic mass consumption circulation, postcard trading, branding, and the medium of photography itself contributed to the stigma of the independent public woman, these very practices nevertheless simultaneously and paradoxically normalized the image of the actress into a standardized and idealized model of beauty for women. The monarchy's legitimation of the photographic medium both complicated the notion of the actress as prostitute and brought the monarchy into erotic associations with the medium. The contradictions inherent in the photographic connection between these two types of female celebrity as images of consumption and circulation —the actress and the monarch—influenced, and continue to influence, our perception of feminine beauty.
