May Florence

May Florence, American soubrette, ‘in a billow of skirts.’ – Rotograph Series no. B 310, circa 1907

 

LIKE POSES WHICH MAKE THE FOOT AND ANKLE PROMINENT

‘New Fad of the Actress Who Would Be Photographed.

‘Queens of the Stage Once Desired to Be Pictured in Stately Poses — Now They Run Strongly to the Unconventional — A Fad Has Set in for Being Posed Seated on the Edge of a Chair or Table — No Picture Harder for the Photographer to Take.
‘THERE seems to be a fashion in poses as well as in clothes, for pictures go in cycles and actresses of a certain period all effect the same kind of postures when they face the camera.
‘For a time they went to the statuesque, the tall commanding figure . . . But now the dress has been put away with the crinoline and the big sleeves, and all the actress now asks when she faces the photographer is a position that will put her feet and ankles in quite as prominent view as her face. . . .
‘Miss May Florence, show girl, whose face and figure are her fortune, adopted a pose very much like that of Miss [Lotta] Faust, except that a little more showed. The same fluffy circle of skirts form a sort of framework for the picture, and the mouth half parted in a smile is lovely and delicate.
‘It is not alone the actress of the comic opera or the light forms of entertainment who has attempted to test her charm in this kind of a picture. Many prominent stars who have earned their place in the haughty ranks of the legitimate [theatre] have tried to see how they would look posed up in this kind of picture. . . .’

 

(Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York, Sunday, 14 July 1907, p. 7)