Saturday, May 09, 2009

Anna May Wong

This picture of Anna May Wong appears in the current issue of Smithsonian magazine, in an article about the photographer Edward Steichen. Edward Steichen set the tone for fashion photography as a photographer for Vogue magazine during the 1920s and 1930s. Anna May Wong was the most successful Chinese-American actress of all time, and her story captures the complexity of Chinese-American life during the first part of the 2oth century. To learn more, I would probably buy "Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend" which is by Graham Russell Gao Hodges (YouTube version).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know if Anna May Wong's photo actually appeared in Vogue magazine?

RSVP to david@chinatownartsspace.com, many thanks!

Randy said...

That's a good question, and I don't know, but the answer is probably in the book that I cite. I did do some research, and I think not. The Smithsonian article online has a photo gallery, "Edward Steichen: In Vogue", provided with "permission of Condé Nast," and this picture is not included. The International Center Of Photography show and Smithsonian distinguish fashion from celebrity photographs and this appears to be an example of the latter.

Randy said...

Color photos of Anna May Wong by Edward Steichen appeared in the March 1935 issue of Vanity Fair.
magazines.things-and-other-stuff.com/edward-steichen.html

Anonymous said...

Wow I dunno how i got in here, but most of the Asian beauties that you collected here dont fit into real Asian(Chinese, Korean, Japanese etc)'s beauty standards. For Asian Americans they are probably considered pretty, but in Asia, no way, -- except Michelle PHan and the girl from Singapore.

Anonymous said...

i luv asian actresses like anna may wong, grace park, celeste thorson, kelly hu and ming na u should do some posts on them too