Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor

It all started with the babies!

As a working photographer, specializing in portraits, Susan Riley met a lot of mothers who brought their young kids to be photographed. But she went a little further by embellishing the photos with a little hand-coloring of the cheeks and lips.

“Then I discovered that if I made them into angels, parents loved it, especially on babies” she said remembering that time before digital photography. “So, they would bring the babies to my studio and I would attach these small wings, made of feathers, that I made, and I would put a little halo on their heads. On the print, I would add a little gold glitter onto the halo. This became a big hit for quite a while. It was a nice and fun business for me.”

One of her clients was, Alicia Bryan, a mother of three little girls, who brought her daughters to be photographed in various guises such as princesses or ballerinas, which gave Riley more opportunities to experiment with adding glitter. One day Bryan brought her a photograph from the late 1920s, wondering if Riley could do something to revive the old print. It was an image of a cowgirl dressed for a movie, with other cowgirls dancing. Riley created a 5-foot print of the dancing cowgirls who also had giant hats. So, she added Swarovski crystals to the hats, some glitter and hand painting, in addition to performing some cleaning-up of the old image.

Bryan was fascinated by the result and wanted to push for more such transformations and do a show. She found a spot in the newly developed Pearl and organized a one-night pop-up event, featuring 13 works.

When digital photography made dark rooms obsolete – and parents and others could photograph anything they wanted, no film necessary – Riley’s phone was no longer ringing very often. It was time to transition to the new technology. “I transitioned from my dark room to my digital dark room, and decided to go in a different direction,” said the artist.

That’s when she immersed herself in research about the divas of the silent film past whose portraits she could freely embellish and recreate according to her imagination and information she learned about them. She already knew quite a few of those stars because she had always loved silent movies, she noted.

Her new works can be currently seen at the Gallery Prudencia through April 8^th.

“Bringing such luminaries from the past back to life with color and sparkle is a joy beyond words,” says the artist’s statement in the exhibit catalog. “I study the (old) photographs, research their stories and then fall in love with each and every one of them. Dimmed by memory, reimagined by me.”

Among the reimagined celebrities are actress Gloria Swanson; dancer Martha Graham; singer/dancer Josephine Baker; the legendary Greta Garbo; Marion Davis, also a film star; French dancer & actress Lily Damita; Holywood diva, Myrna Loy; Louise Brooks, and others, plus four men, including the famed Ballets Russes virtuoso dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky and Erté, the Russian-born Romain Petrovich de Tirtoff who became known as Erte in France. He was a designer of costumes, sets, jewelry and fashion. The Polish actress, Pola Negri is there, too, as is “the Mexican Spitfire” Lupe Velez. Velez worked on Broadway and in Hollywood.

Riley starts with old photos of these luminaries which she then transforms into images of splendor with coloring, super-fine glitter, crystals and beads. Some of the original photos date back to 1886.

One interesting photo is of the Marchesa Luisa Casati, a lady who lived a life of “extreme wealth, extravagance and decadence” in Italy and Paris. She reportedly said that she wanted to be “a living work of art.” The costume she is wearing in the photo that inspired Riley, was designed by Leon Bakst for her grand Indo-Persian themed party at her Venetian palazzo.

Another image that stands out by being different (not a portrait) is “Vengeance,” which was originally taken by Constant Puyo in 1886. Riley was attracted by the image itself, showing a woman holding a dagger. Puyo was an advocate for the Pictorialist movement in France, whose members believed photography should be considered fine art.

“When I saw the original image – as you can see, it’s very dark – the woman’s figure is very dark; she’s in the shadow, she has that dagger, she’s going to kill someone. He clearly set this up. But I knew there was a lot of color underneath in this photograph. So, I began to add color to it,” explained Riley. The image is still darkish as seems appropriate given the context.

The whole project started with Louise Brooks, actually. Though the original picture was black &white, Riley has her in a red dress, and a note explains that Louise was “seen exiting the House of Patou (in Paris) after purchasing the gown for the silent film, “Prix de Beaute.” She wore the dress in two films.

As she researched her subject matter, Riley made discoveries along the way. “Once I began researching a person, I was immersed. I would read everything I could find, and I looked at every photo I could find. Once you start working on them on the computer  and you can blow up their face and look in their eyes, it all becomes personal. I knew I was going to love this project. I became so enthralled.

And she hopes the long-dead stars would approve her hard work on their behalf.
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“Redux: Brought Back, Revived” is on view at the Gallery Prudencia, 2518 N. Main Ave., 78212; 210-422-8681; www.prudenciagallery.com