When
the lease on the Berkeley Square studio ran out in 1955,
Madame Yevonde found other premises just off Knightsbridge,
close to Harrods' store. Although by this time she was
sixty-three years old, and the days of the portrait
studio seemed numbered, she did not feel ready to retire.
Never at a loss for ideas to promote her business, she
decided that if people were no longer ready to come
to her studio, then she would go to their homes and
photograph them there, often photographing their homes,
their children and their pets as well. She started exhibiting
again, the first such exhibition in 1953 consisting
of photographs of children who lived in the same street
as she did, with the proceeds going to the Save the
Children Fund. Other work featured in a Royal Photographic
Society exhibition devoted entirely to women photographers
in 1958. Around this time, Madame Yevonde also started
experimenting with solarisation, while an exhibition
at her Knightsbridge studio in 1961 entitled 'Dove or
Predator?' featured a series of portraits of women in
which she attempted to divide them broadly into these
two categories. These exhibitions served to keep her
name before the public in lean times, and she continued
to receive commissions for special assignments, in addition
to her portraiture.
In
1964, she received an invitation to stay with friends
in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. As she had
always harboured a secret ambition to photograph the
Emperor of Ethiopia, this was an opportunity not to
be missed and so, with her sense of adventure still
burning brightly at the age of 71, she flew out to Ethiopia
with her assistant, Ann Forshaw, who had joined her
just a few months previously. A commission from the
magazine Homes & Gardens to photograph the British Embassy
in Addis Ababa, where H.M.the Queen was scheduled to
stay while on a state visit to Ethiopia the following
year, helped to finance the trip which, not surprisingly,
provided plenty of material for another exhibition at
her Knightsbridge studio. Pride of place went to portraits
of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia,
photographed at the Jubilee Palace in Addis Ababa, as
well as portraits of other members of his family, and
some of his pet lions.
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