Item 12 - Extract from 'The Changing Venus'

Typescript extract on changing conceptions of beauty throughout the first half of the twentieth century and the impact of photogenic beauty on these conceptions. Film and photography have conditioned the way in which normal imperfections and deficiencies can be manipulated and interpreted as beautiful. Beaton quotes Francis Bacon, who writes that "there is no beauty which hath not some strangeness in its proportions". It is only in finding the original expression of herself that a woman can avoid conformity and become a true individual. Intended for publication in an anthology entitled 'Visions of Beauty' (1979). Originally published in 'The Face of the World: An International Scrapbook of People and Places'.