Role Play: Neeta Madahar & Madame Yevonde

About

United across time by a common interest in the construction of female roles, the contemporary series Flora by Neeta Madahar is shown alongside it's inspiration - the distinctive 1935 Goddesses series by Madame Yevonde, in an exhibition of rich, theatrically seductive portraiture. Madame Yevonde was a celebrated British society photographer and also a pioneer in the field of colour photography. Acknowledged as her finest work, Goddesses presents such mythological figures as Europa and Medusa as portrayed by a series of 1930s socialites. Identified sometimes only by their husbands' named title, these women play perfectly to an idealised vision of feminine power and beauty. Inspired by these depictions, Neeta Madahar explores contemporary expectations of women, inviting seventeen female friends to pose as Flora the Roman deity of flowering and fruit-bearing plants. The images produced are universal representations but also deeply personal reflections allowing the sitters to fashion their own idealised femininity.