Alice, photographed

[larryhammer]

I don't trust her. Or her. She looks like she's about to get into trouble. And we have other grounds to suspect her, if the photographer's live-fics of her in Wonderland are accurate portrayals. More of the Rev. Dodgson's photos of Alice Liddel here, including some sitting with her two sisters. And if you've ever wondered what she was like as a young woman -- though that's taken by another, for he stopped photographing her at this age.

More of Dodgson's photographs, of children and adults, some of which can be ordered as prints. And to round things off, an article on the question of the questionable practice of specializing in photographing little girls. Personally, I have trouble believing that anyone who could get that many children to pose unaffectedly had anything hinky going on. Children pick up on things.

(links via Kottke)

---L.

Comments

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

I had the weirdest reaction to all those photographs, best summed up by the line, "I see dead people."

Beautiful work, but hit me strangely. (Which reflects more on me than on the work.)

[larryhammer]

Do you get that from other Victorian photos?

And does it change with the quality of the sitting? These are a lot more lifelike than many I've seen.

---L.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Or if you're really interested you could read Phil Farmer's Riverworld series, and see not only what she was like as an adult, but also in her afterlife!

[larryhammer]

I read the first as a teenager and was unimpressed. I might react differently now.

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

She looks to me so very self-conscious and posed (which she would have to be to hold so still in the pose for the long time the shutters took then) it's hard to descry any personality. She's so very stiff it really seems to me that the demure looks, the demure hands in the tattered dress photo, are not at all her, but directed.

[coyoty.livejournal.com]

It's the little girl from Silent Hill! :o

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

We visited the enormous show of C. Dodgson's photos, which weren't all little girls by any means, at the International Center for Photography some years back. It was wonderful, including the digital, light board, recreations of the surviving photo albums he made for friends.

The strongest, remaining response that I took away with me, was how much the photographs reflected the British Empire. There were so many items that were from all the farflung places that the administrators and missionaries and soldiers had brought back home.

Love, C.

[larryhammer]

Interesting, that response. Looking through one of the galleries I linked to, I was more focused on the emotions and relationships of the sitters.

---L.

[sovay]

She grew up to have an amazing face . . .