Dancing with them. Let's Make a Collage - A Contest for All Creatives on Hive - Round 57

avatar
(Edited)

Nosotras. Ronda 57.png

Forma libre escala de grises.png

They are beautiful, they are fun, they are dangerous, they are sexy!
And they are women who made history, not only as dancers, but the way they lived their lives helped build a transgressive female model. Their stories are well known and I won't tell them here now (although maybe I will one day, in a novel, as it should be), but, if you don't know these lives, I leave these links for you to explore exceptional life adventures:

Josephine Baker
Isadora Duncan
Mata Hari
Zita Lockford
Zita Lockford1

I wanted to make a small personal tribute that would bring together these women from the art world, and LMAC Community gave me the opportunity in their 57th round of Let's Make a Collage - A Contest for All Creatives on Hive (here you can see the call)
Isadora Duncan, Josephine Baker, Belle Lockford and Mata Hari are finally together in a job I've done. I am happy and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I was doing it.

About the process

With this collage I learned a lot of things. Especially things about pasting from the editor. Using this feature I modified a few things from the original photo provided by Shaka (a beautiful photo, by the way, and as always, I find it very hard to modify it because I feel like I'm destroying it). So, as I said, I cut out and small the water mirror to roll the barge; I also completed the railing on Isadora Duncan's foot and also placed the water lilies and lotuses in the water.
One thing I have particular taste and interest in are the old retouched photographs and some of that I wanted to appear in my collage. You can tell me if you liked the effect. Besides the makeup and some coloring on the clothes, I added mermaid tails to Baker and Hari. Getting the proportions right gave their work. Mata Hari's double tail was a last-minute inspiration. You will tell me, after you know her biography, if she deserves both tails or maybe I should add another one.
Well, I leave below the list of the images I used and the photos of the four protagonists, because they are works of photographic artists to whom I think a lot of respect is due, even if in one of the cases the name is unknown.

Forma libre escala de grises.png

Images

JB.png

Isadora 1.png

isadoraduncandancer4.jpg

Date 01/01/1915
Contributors Genthe, Arnold, 1869-1942, photographer
Source Library of Congress
Link http://www.loc.gov/
Copyright info No known restrictions on publication.

Zita.png

Mata.png

Flower 1: https://pxhere.com/es/photo/1366998
Flower 2: https://pxhere.com/es/photo/1122711
Mascaron: https://pixabay.com/es/photos/escultura-mascar%C3%B3n-de-proa-4350989/
Esphere: https://pxhere.com/es/photo/1002445
Mermaid 1: https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/sirena-mar- fantasia-2442629/
Mermaid 2:https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/sirena-aislados-en-topless-sexy-4789775/

And, of course, photo by @Shaka
Ronda 57.jpeg

Forma libre escala de grises.png

Gracias por la compañía. Bienvenidos siempre



0
0
0.000
8 comments
avatar

What an interesting concept. Thought-provoking, effective.
All strong women, though not all necessarily admirable, because I'm not sure about Mara Hari. Who is sure? As with so many things in history, we will never know. However, is it a coincidence that you feature strong women while, in the U.S., Kamala Harris becomes the first female Vice-president Elect?
Mata Hari should have two tails, I think, not because she was a spy, but because of the ambiguity of her position.
Good luck with this very original, provocative design.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Hello, dear @agmoore. This is the problem with the generalizations we make when we are tired and write without paying due attention. Indeed, Mata Hari could not distinguish herself as a woman who consciously made contributions to society, as Baker and Duncan did. In Baker's case, as an agent during the war and as a major player in the struggle for black and women's civil rights in North America. In Duncan's case, from her innovative awareness of art and the feminine role from her aesthetic-ideological project. This is definitely not the case of Mata Hari, whose morality of life in the context she had to live was ambiguous and she qualifies almost as a victim, if it were not for the distance of time. This distancing is what makes me understand her life as a transgressor, from her vital refusal to be framed in the role of a self-sacrificing mother (although there is evidence that she wanted to recover her daughter), faithful wife and demure sexuality. She simply resolved her situation by appealing to the manipulation of conventions and chose to be the liar and the seductress. There are some letters where she shows a courage of speech that I do not know how attached to the truth are. The truth is that she did not lack courage. I will edit my post and remove the unfortunate generalization. More precisely, the trait that, from my perspective, unites these women, apart from being outstanding dancers (in very different ways) in their careers, is that the way they lived their lives turned out to be transgressive.
Thank you for paying attention. I appreciate this enormously.
And I'm happy that you find my collage provocative. All these women were also provocative, each in their own way.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Shirley Chisholm, a U.S. politician, was also transgressive. She was a woman, and African American:

first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972) (from womenshistory.org)

I remember Chisholm said she endured more discrimination in Congress as a woman, than as an African American. Her feminism (why has that word gone out of style?) was a beacon for me. I graduated from high school in 1965 and was fortunate to have some conspicuous examples of strong women in public life who validated my sense of self as a person (not as a woman). So, I appreciate your highlighting strong women who can--as men can--make good choices and bad choices. The important part of the stories you highlight is that these women were determined to make their own choices.

Your collage was I think clear in your intention...these women forged paths of independence. They resisted pressure that would have confined them, and defined their lives, in a terms of gender. It is a mission I think I have been on since early childhood---I had older brothers :))

0
0
0.000
avatar
(Edited)

Dear @agmoore, I did not know Chisholm, but I knew many other female personalities who have had to achieve double and triple to be considered worthy.
On feminism, I believe there has been a set of circumstances, including a publicity stunt, that have trivialized fair claims with undue exaggeration. Of course, I am in favor of the use of the term and budgets, but I am inclined to a discourse that marks the differences as well as the inequalities. In my country, women have always been pioneers and traditionally strong figures, which has not spared them from poverty, from becoming historical victims, or from being marginalized. However, to explain myself better, I will tell you: I took a course at my university on women writers who had been marginalized by the publishing system of their respective epochs. Ninety percent of the corpus (given their technical and artistic characteristics) seemed to me, and not only to me, to have been correctly ignored, since it was simply bad literature written by women. The discourse of equality comes with all the implications and there are defenders of feminism who are not willing to accept that. As is the case with almost everything, right? That's why I corrected my post. That's why I thought it was important to clarify my position on Mata Hari. Although, I must admit, I have sympathy for the villains and the freaks.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Wow! the best I've seen so far this week, amazing! Reblogged!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Thank you very much, @razeiv. I am very touched by this appreciation. Thank you for the reblogged.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Wow, a collage with a great combination of knowledge! I love it.
I like works like the ones you do @adncabrera. Reflection, art and provocation, an explosive mix for our times.
Greetings! I will vote for you in the pool

0
0
0.000
avatar

Dearest @marcybetancourt, how nice to hear that from you. I'm starting my second round of visits to the collages. I have seen some beautiful work and I have just seen your amazing (as always) collage. I will pass by your blog. The competition is very tough.

0
0
0.000