Framed By Men

Miss Psyche Altham, photographed by Yevonde on her engagement to Mr George Berkeley Sheffield in 1935, was a woman of great talent and skill, yet the accompanying text frames her only as a charming addition to her fiancé’s ennobled family. We read that the men in her family – her father and grandfather – were important military men, with strings of letters after their names. Not until the last sentence of the piece do we see that Psyche is a ‘racing motorist and a dancer’. In fact, she had danced as principal with the Grosvenor House Cabaret and raced cars at Broadlands and the Brighton Speed Trials, yet these amazing achievements are dismissed in five brief words. There are countless examples of female sitters for photographs such as this one, and researchers at Hundred Heroines are seeking them out and discovering their fascinating stories – giving these wonderful women their lives back and taking them out of the frame in which men confined them!

By Carol Lamble

Find out more about (Madame) Yevonde here

We have hundreds of tear sheets in the Collection. If you’d like to join the research volunteers and discover more about the women framed by the men in their lives, drop us a line hello@hundredheroines.org