Merlyn Severn
{{Short description|English photographer (1897–1973)}}
Merlyn Severn (1897–1973) was an English photographer. She spent seven years working as a photojournalist in Africa, but is most remembered for changing the direction of dance photography from focusing on posed photographs to action shots.
Life
She was born Dorothy Susan Harvey on 8 August 1897 in Chelsea, London, to civil servant Sir Paul Harvey and his wife Ethel, née Persse.
During World War II, she worked for the WAAF in radar, and spent a period of internment on German-occupied Guernsey.
Later in life she lived in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, before returning to live in Aller Park, Devon, and she died in Devon on 12 November 1973.{{Cite ODNB |title=Severn, Merlyn [real name Dorothy Susan Harvey] (1897–1973), photographer |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-69508 |access-date=2024-01-10 |date=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/69508 |language=en}}
Photographic career
A self-taught photographer, she photographed Michel Fokine’s Blum Company in their opening season in June 1936, which led to a book, Ballet in Action; a one-person show; and six photographs being accepted by the London Salon of Photography in 1937.{{Cite book |last=Merlyn Severn |url=http://archive.org/details/balletinaction0000merl |title=Ballet in Action |date=1938 |publisher= Oxford university press|others=Internet Archive}} Particular in her methods, she used ultra-speed film imported from America to allow her to print exhibition-quality prints directly from negatives.{{Cite book |last=Barabanov |first=Alexander |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IWj3oTB0IDMC&dq=%22merlyn+severn%22&pg=PA87 |title=A Dance |date=2012-03-31 |publisher=Random House |isbn=978-1-4090-1985-5 |pages=87 |language=en}} Her use of dance action shots was innovative,{{Cite journal |last=Karthas |first=Ilyana |date=2020 |title=Arbiters of taste: Women, modernism and the making of Paris |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957155820910718 |journal=French Cultural Studies |language=en |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=97–110 |doi=10.1177/0957155820910718 |s2cid=218953658 |issn=0957-1558|url-access=subscription }}{{Cite book |last=Carroll |first=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=geO6K-1M114C&dq=%22merlyn+severn%22&pg=PA210 |title=The Ballets Russes in Australia and Beyond |date=2011 |publisher=Wakefield Press |isbn=978-1-86254-884-8 |pages=210 |language=en}} and she defended it in the introduction to her book.
Between 1945 and 1947, she was a full-time staff photographer for Picture Post.{{cite news |last1=Hopkinson |first1=Tom |title=Caught by Grace |publisher=The Independent Magazine |date=28 Oct 1989}} Working freelance for the same paper, Severn spent seven years in Africa, covering stories in the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. She collaborated with Hugh Tracey on African Dances of the Witwatersrand Gold Mines,{{Cite journal |last=Nettleton |first=Anitra |date=2017-05-04 |title=Dress and a Fashioned Identity among Black South African Migrant Miners in the Mid-Twentieth Century |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02560046.2017.1383490 |journal=Critical Arts |language=en |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=18–34 |doi=10.1080/02560046.2017.1383490 |s2cid=149074002 |issn=0256-0046|url-access=subscription }} and wrote an account of her travels, Congo Pilgrim.{{Cite book |last=Severn |first=Merlyn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=spcMAQAAIAAJ |title=Congo Pilgrim |date=1954 |publisher=Museum Press |language=en}}
In 1956, she wrote an account of her photographic career, Double Exposure.
Works
- Ballet in Action (1938)
- Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden (1947)
- (with Hugh Tracey) African Dances of the Witwatersand Gold Mines (1952)
- Congo Pilgrim (1954)
- Double Exposure (1956)
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/merlyn-severn Photographs by Merlyn Severn at Getty]
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