The Washington Post - 20.02.2020

thursday, february 20 , 2020. the washington post eZ re C3

BY MATTHEW GUERRIERI

The anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss was fascinated by
miniature artworks: Their size al-
lowed them to be “grasped, as-
sessed and apprehended at a
glance,” while their obvious hand-
made qualities i nvited contempla-
tion of their creators’ choices,
transforming the viewer “into an
active participant, without even
being aware of it,” he wrote. Tues-
day’s Kennedy Center recital of
four-hand piano repertoire by the
English pianist Paul Lewis and h is
Scottish counterpart Steven os-
borne, presented by Washington
Performing Arts, invited r eflection
on Levi-Strauss’s analysis. The
program was french (and russian
by way of france) suites of small
pieces; the p erformance was f ull of
transparent, discernible choices.
Lewis and o sborne showed p re-
cise touch and perpetual a ttentive-
ness — every note actively exam-
ined in light of the phrase, every
phrase in light of the whole. The
program was similarly consid-

ered, three works on each half,

representing three musical

moods: lovely, brash, delicate. The

lovely music — Gabriel fauré’s

op. 56 “Dolly Suite” and Claude

Debussy’s “ Petite Suite” — was sat-

urated with finesse, phrases and

decorations rounded off with un-

assuming flourish. Lewis took the

upper part in both, declaiming

melodies with firm but plummy

enunciation. (In fauré’s pieces,

composed for his mistress’s

daughter, the effect often was that

of a distinguished Shakespearean

reading Dr. Seuss.) osborne, man-

ning the lower parts and pedals,

conscientiously m aintained a bur-

nished c larity of texture.

francis Poulenc’s Sonata for

four-Hand Piano and Igor Strav-

insky’s “Trois pièces faciles” pro-

vided measures of impudence:

barbed, neoclassical high jinks

rendered in bright, primary col-

ors, with the occasional restrained

touch. (The last of Stravinsky’s

easy pieces, a deadpan “Polka,” d is-

solved into an exquisite Gallic

shrug.) But the implications of

miniature art were most apparent

in the most gossamer music. De-

bussy’s “Six Épigraphes Antiques”

and maurice ravel’s “ma mère

l’oye” suite, the former gnomic,

the latter pastel-lush, were both

exercises i n discreet, even hermet-

ic understatement. osborne, tak-

ing the upper parts, cultivated a

pianistic stage whisper, with Lew-

is’s pedaling providing a generous

halo of resonance. The ravel

aimed for the diaphanous; t he De-

bussy, sometimes, seemed barely

there at a ll.

It c reated a feeling that one was

listening as much to Lewis and

osborne listening to each other as

to the music itself. m aybe the audi-

ence members weren’t Levi-

Strauss’s active participants, but

at least they were in the studio,

watching the work happen. The

pair’s encore, the E-minor “Dum-

ka” from Antonin Dvorak’s op. 72

Slavonic Dances, was, by contrast,

thoroughly extroverted. one

could almost sense them punch

the c lock.

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MUSIC REVIEW

At the Kennedy Center, pianists Lewis and Osborne work in miniature

photos by kaupo kikkas, left, and ben ealovega

Paul lewis, left, and Steven osborne presented a recital of four-hand piano repertoire.

BY KELSEY ABLES

The Library of Congress an-
nounced Wednesday the acquisi-
tion of the entire archive of Afri-
can American photographer
Shawn Walker.
Capturing street shadows with
the same care he brought to tak-
ing pictures of maya Angelou and
To ni morrison, Walker has
spanned genres and blended
styles over his five decades as a
photographer. He spent 30 years
documenting community pa-
rades and has recently turned his
attention to other visual investi-
gations: reflections and walls.
Beverly Brannan, the library’s
curator of photography, f ound the
artistic aspect of Walker’s archive
surprising. “I work almost exclu-
sively with documentary photo-
graphs,” she said, “but he exam-
ines crystals and reflections and
abstract patterns of things.”
The Walker archive — 1 00,000
photographs, negatives and
transparencies capturing life on
the streets of Harlem from 1963 to
now — will be the library’s first
full archive of work by an African
American photographer accessi-
ble to the public. Such an acquisi-
tion is rare — until now, the
library had only seven compre-
hensive, single-photographer ar-
chives. (The library’s robert mc-
Neill archive, the only other com-
prehensive, single-photographer
archive by an African American,
is restricted from public view
until oct. 1, 2022.)
The library strives to obtain
representative archives from ev-
ery era, Brannon said, “but we did

not have a large group of African

American photographs from the

late 20th century. This fit a need.”

The acquisition also features

2,500 objects from the Kamoinge

Workshop, an influential collec-

tive of African American photog-

raphers that was founded in Har-

lem in 1963 as a response to

discrimination against black pho-

tographers at major publications.

Walker, 80, was a founding mem-

ber of the group, which also in-

cluded Louis Draper and Walker

mentor roy DeCarava, and has

called the Kamoinge his “Sor-

bonne.”

Walker received his first cam-

era as a birthday gift in his early

teens and began taking photos in

his Harlem neighborhood. Even-

tually, he went to work as a

photographer for black newspa-

pers, before co-founding the Ka-

moinge Workshop when he was

23. Inspired by such artists as
    romare Bearden, who illustrated
    black life with colorful collages,
    and photographer Henri Cartier-
    Bresson, best known for champi-
    oning photography that captures
    the “decisive moment,” Walker
    said he tries to remain unseen as a
    photographer, depicting reality
    in all its spontaneity.
    “I have tried to document the
    world around me, particularly
    the African American communi-
    ty, especially in Harlem, from an
    honest perspective so that our
    history is not lost,” Walker said in
    a statement announcing the ac-
    quisition.
    Brannan said the library is in
    conversation with Kamoinge
    groups across the mid-Atlantic
    about expanding the library’s col-
    lection, and an exhibition related
    to the Walker acquisition is being
    discussed. Works by several Kam-
    oinge photographers, including
    Walker, are now on view at the
    Virginia museum of fine Arts in
    the exhibition “Working To geth-
    er: Louis Draper and the Kam-
    oinge Workshop,” which will trav-
    el to the Whitney this summer.
    [email protected]

Library acquires archive of photographer who artistically captured Harlem

shawn walker/library of Congress

Shawn walker’s “Neighbor at 124 w 117 th St, Harlem, New York” exemplifies the photographer’s use of shadows.

Barbara’s short-lived marriage to

Connolly, during which the

maudlin, jowly critic soon t ook to

lying in the bathtub for hours

and murmuring “I wish I was

dead.” Yet, when Connolly does

die at a ge 7 1 in 1974, nearly all the

surviving “lost girls”— by then in

their 50 s — weep at his funeral.

To day’s readers may feel that

Lys, Sonia, Barbara and the oth-

ers, despite their proclaimed in-

dependence, were still defining

themselves through the men in

their lives. Perhaps so. Still, be-

cause of D.J. Taylor’s vivid and

affecting group biography, the

“lost girls” will never be lost

again.

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Michael Dirda reviews books each

thursday in style.

During one country-house week-

end, Sonia jumped into a pond to

escape another guest’s unwel-

come attentions. His advances

were bad enough, she told Peter

Quennell, who helped her from

the water, but even worse “he

doesn’t seem to understand what

Cyril stands for.” once, a lecher-

ous frenchman, without invita-

tion, began to paw Barbara in a

taxi: “She hit him twice on the

head with a volume of Virginia

Woolf she happened to be carry-

ing” and so made her escape.

As the 1940 s and the 10-year

run of Horizon both draw to a

close, the tone of Ta ylor’s book

darkens. Connolly cruelly breaks

with Lys. A long section tracks

orwell’s last months, culminat-

ing in his hospital-bed wedding

to Sonia. Another chapter covers

repartee and sexual dalliance.

Ta ylor retells numerous sto-

ries of the women’s boldness and

aplomb. on the train to Edin-

burgh for her father-in-law’s fu-

neral, Angela passed the night in

a sleeper with, in her own words,

a “very good-looking lover, a

painter, called David something.”

the music of Time,” make it easy

to view England between 1925

and 1950 as something of an

adult Disneyland, populated by

witty and beautiful people who

dreaded nothing so much as

being bored or, worse still, being

boring. They seldom were either,

especially given their flair for dry

era when, f aced with t he possibil-

ity of being killed, many young

women cast aside what remained

of their parents’s puritan morali-

ty and lived for the moment.

Ta ylor — a leading English

novelist and cultural historian —

worries a bit over the definition

of a true “lost girl.” They weren’t

“lost” i n any melodramatic Victo-

rian sense, and their families

didn’t disown them. Their back-

grounds were largely upper mid-

dle class, even if their childhoods

seem to have been generally

unhappy. Headstrong, intelligent

and determined, they often fled

parental supervision at surpris-

ingly young ages. Barbara moved

to London a t 15. Some b ecame art

students or did clerical work or,

best of all, joined the office staff

of Horizon. Lys and Sonia quickly

proved essential to the monthly

magazine, overseeing its day-to-

day operations. What, after all,

could be better than a job in

publishing? The “lost girls”

might sometimes trudge home to

dismal bedsits, but they would

also be regularly invited to glam-

orous cocktail parties and din-

ners at the ritz.

Their lovers often tended to be

older men from their own class,

members of what Humphrey

Carpenter dubbed “the Brides-

head Generation.” If you’ve read

Carpenter’s book of that name or

biographies of Waugh, Connolly,

orwell, Stephen Spender, Patrick

Leigh fermor and Arthur Koes-

tler or if you’ve dipped into these

writers’ correspondence and dia-

ries, you’ve already met, albeit in

passing, some of the “lost girls.”

Such books, coupled with works

like Barbara’s memoir, “Tears Be-

fore Bedtime,” Hilary Spurling’s

affectionate biography of Sonia,

“The Girl from the fiction De-

partment,” and Anthony Powell’s

12-part roman à clef, “A Dance to

of several of those women. There
is Lys Lubbock, the former high-
fashion model who became Con-
nolly’s longtime mistress, cooked
his breakfast and even drew his
bath water; Sonia Brownell, once
known as the “Euston road Ve-
nus,” who married the dying
George orwell; the heart-
stoppingly beautiful Janetta
Woolley and her promiscuous
half sister Angela Culme-
Seymour; and, above all, the
legendary adventuress Barbara
Skelton. As Taylor writes, with
considerable understatement, by
the age of 23 Skelton “had al-
ready got through more experi-
ence than half-a-dozen women
twice her age.”
The free-spirited Barbara —
for clarity Ta ylor calls his oft-wed
subjects by their first names —
left home at 15, did a little
modeling, and was soon relishing
the emotional turmoil her glance
or smile could cause. She con-
ducted simultaneous affairs with
the biographer Peter Quennell
and the artist feliks To polski,
eventually married and divorced
both Connolly and the wealthy
publisher George Weidenfeld
and then — in later years, when
she briefly resided in New York —
dated robert Silvers, the long-
time editor of the New York
review of Books. I o nce asked the
older Silvers about Skelton. What
was she like? He only returned a
wistful smile and said, with gen-
tlemanly discretion, “She was a
lot of fun.”
And so is this book. If the BBC
knows its business, “The Lost
Girls” will soon be a sexy, soap-
operatic, partner-swapping,
highly addictive miniseries, set
largely during World War II as
German bombs fall on London.
Those years ushered in a heady

book world from C1

Author D.J. Taylor’s ‘The Lost Girls’ reads like an enthralling BBC miniseries

felix taylor

In “The lost Girls,” d.J. Taylor presents a vivid and affecting

biography of women tied to the british literary world in the 1940 s.

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