The secrets of the darkroom: experience and interpratative hypotesis on Lady Clementina Hawarden’s photographic work

Abstract

During the Victorian period Lady Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden, produced hundreds of photographs portraying her adolescent daughters: Clementina Maude and Isabella Grace. For years, she took pictures of them in the intimate spaces of their house, mainly capturing their poses in front of glasses and mirrors. The girls, frequently dressed as non easily recognisable historical characters, wore sumptuous gowns which seem to blend – in the photographs – with the wallpaper. Why Clementina did portray er daughters obsessively? And which kind of psychological dynamics were generated between the photographer and her models? The mirrors were the unique witnesses of the scene: do they conceal any secret? Through a psychological approach the paper attempts to connect Lady Hawarden’s work with themes such as voyeurism, art as reparation, double and uncanny.