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Category / People / Icons / Muses

The Ghost of Francesca Woodman

In the decades since she jumped from a lower Manhattan high rise window at the age of 22, Francesca Woodman’s work has been rediscovered, revered and taught as gospel to photography students and has taken on a mythical cult status. Critics are forever tempted to use the circumstances of her death in 1981 as a…

What Happened to Picasso’s Mysterious Teenage Muse?

For a few Spring months in 1954, a melancholy Picasso found himself enraptured by 19-year-old Sylvette David. Of all the muses who bookmarked his life — and there were many — she’s fallen to the wayside of history as one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood. For years, critics wrote the body of work she…

Silent Saviour: How Marcel Marceau Used Mime to Save Lives in WWII

His name is synonymous with the art of mime, a performer whose silent expressions spoke volumes. But beyond his pale-faced persona and invisible walls lies a story of remarkable bravery and heroism. During World War II, Marceau used his unique talents to save children from the horrors of Nazi-occupied France, first using mime to help…

Memories of a Lost Valley: 5,000 Photographs Discovered in an Attic

Between 1900 and 1930, a poor and destitute seed pedlar took more than five thousand photographs of daily life in an isolated valley of the Italian-speaking Swiss territory to the south of the Alps. Roberto Donetta can now be considered one of Swiss photography’s great outsider artists, but when he died in debt, solitude and misery in 1932,…

Now That Is How You Write a Love Letter

They met in Paris in 1932. Both already married, American novelist Henry Miller and Franco-American diarist Anaïs Nin began an intense love affair leading to some of the most passionate letters ever written… August 14, 1932 Anaïs: Don’t expect me to be sane anymore. Don’t let’s be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes—you can’t dispute…

Artist of the Week: She was a Victorian Rockstar Photographer

Julia Margaret Cameron revolutionized the world of photography. Known for her dreamy, soft-focus images and dramatic compositions, Cameron was the queen of Victorian portraiture. She was ahead of her time, doing everything differently before it was cool. Cameron was a late bloomer artistically, she didn’t pick up a camera until she was 48. Her daughter…

20 People Not Giving a Damn About the Red Carpet at Cannes

My favourite kind of people are one the ones who don’t give a damn. So while the rest of the media fusses over the red carpet posers at the Cannes film festival, getting their seasonal fix of celebrity circusry, let’s take a look back at the ones who were just in it for the booze, the beach, and the…

How Did We Forget the First Movie Star?

Picture this: it’s the early 1900s, the silent film era is still just finding its feet, and movie stars are as mythical as unicorns. Enter Florence Lawrence, the “first movie star”, who is about to embark on an epic career, spending the next three decades appearing in almost 300 films. Up until this point, no…

She was the Sapphic Sensation of Belle Époque Paris

Picture Paris at the turn of the 20th century: a city drenched in absinthe, artistic ambition, and outrageous fashion choices. Amid the bohemian splendor of the Belle Époque, a woman named Renée Vivien, a Brit in Paris, emerged as a poetic powerhouse and an icon of Sapphic love. Move over, Oscar Wilde, it’s time we…

The Selfie-Obsessed Countess of Vanity

She wasn’t the most likeable character of her time. Once rumoured to be the most beautiful woman in 19th century Europe, a queen of both style and drama; model, mistress, self-appointed muse, narcissist; if there’s one thing to know about the Italian Countess de Castiglione – it’s that she was seriously vain. Shipped off to…

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