Finding Dora Maar : An Artist, an Address Book, a Life by Brigitte Benkemoun, translated by Jody Gladding - Book Review

 Sue's Reviews 

Finding Dora Maar: An Artist, an Address Book, a Life
by 

Brigitte Benkemoun,

 

Jody Gladding (Translation)

Sue's review

Jul 05, 2023  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: biog-memoir, art-history, art-and-artists

Fascinating book about the Surrealists in Paris especially photographer Dora Maar who knew them all. Her photographs are every bit as strange as the more contrived work of some of the others associated with the surrealist movement.

The fascinating thing about Brigitte Benkemoun's book is that it's based on a chance find at an online auction. She bought a used vintage diary and found Dora Maar's address book at the back. This happenstance is pure Surrealism, I love it.

As for the book, some great research has gone into the writing and I will definitely read it again.

New Header Picture again

I'm a photographer as well as a writer. I enjoy taking, and hoarding, photographs, so I may as well use more of them here as headers for the blog.

In this picture there's a family in the Amazonian rainforest, crossing a rope bridge over a small but busy stream that rushes down a gulch between cliffs, on its way to refresh, just slightly, the turbid Amazon miles downstream. Are the family in danger of falling prey to a lurking jaguar, or an undiscovered dinosaur left over from the last great extinction? Are they on their way to meet a friendly local tribe... or is one of their number doomed to become lost in the jungle, having to revert to the wild, eating fallen fruits from the massive branches above, learning to catch fish from the stream and compete with the jaguar for prey?

Or are they just at the Eden Project in Cornwall, enjoying the experience without the travel, or the potential danger.

Every picture tells a story. Writers can tell any story we like, we don't have to use all the information in the picture.

Pictures are definitely a great provider of stimulation and sometimes even inspiration for me as a writer.

Every Picture...

New header photograph to illustrate a cliche -  'Every Picture Tells a Story.'

The photograph shows a holiday scene, a man is sitting on a rock, watching as children run on a beach towards the breaking waves. This is what the photographer intended. The photographer also intended to show that the man was not known to the children, he was not part of their family. I know because I was the photographer.

Writers tell stories; writers can look at a picture and tell a story that is different to the story the photographer intended. Anyway photographs are a fiction, all they do is capture the light as it was in a tiny moment in time, and they leave out everything which is beyond the frame of the photograph. Photographs lie.

Photographers also tell stories. A good photographer knows this and looks very carefully, frames the picture very carefully, so that it says what they want it to say. A bad photographer doesn't actually see what they are photographing, only what they think they are photographing. 

This second photo is almost the same image as the new header photograph, but it's framed differently and the contrast, the light and dark are enhanced, like a painting it can be said to have chiaroscuro. It records a different moment in time; the wave has broken, the children are leaving the beach, the man on the rock is alone. The clouds billow up above his head, the rocks are dark, the beach in the foreground is barren. The man's state of alone-ness is emphasised by these pictorial factors.

For a photographer, that may be enough. The story is a mysterious image of a man's alone-ness. A writer will feel the compulsion to say more. A photograph can often be a trigger for writing a story, a poem or even a play.