So Who Was the Lady in Red?

[Anna Morris]

Phillip: That's interesting. I had once been told video tape depended on copper. It's all new to me, that it is about iron.

[Phillip Walton]

Anna, iron molecules are magnetic, under normal circumstances they are all jumbled up so that iron and its alloys such as steel, and iron oxide (rust) are not magnetic as being jumbled they cancel each other out. To create a magnet all the molecules have to be lined up N-S, this can be done by passing an electric current around the iron. A magnetic tape records by varying the electric current passing around the tape, this happens several thousand times per second and several hundred times across the width of the tape. This is also why a tape can be ruined by passing a magnet near it.

[Anna Morris]

Debra: There are several things going on with the pictures. The composition is interesting and the technical effect of the film, light, etc. is extraordinary. Beyond that O'Gorman was a very fine artist with an excellent eye for beauty. I was so sure when I first saw your avi, that it was a colorized picture from early silent films. If O'Gorman was an impressionist painter he would rank with Renoir and the other great ones I think. These are very fine pictures.

(I have no idea about the chemical properties of any film. My relative in the film industry recently told me that pictures on video tape are basically a rusting process; the same as rust, though it's a magnetic process. How the tapes can be re-used, I have no idea. Dirty heads in a VCR are because of tiny bits of metal falling off.)

[Robert Linford]

Christina is actually mentioned on a peerage site - apparently because of the Waldegrave element :

http://www.thepeerage.com/p64307.htm

[Debra Arif]

Thanks, Robert.
Great to see the other pictures O'Gorman took of the family too.
It looks like the 'girl holding a bunch of flowers' and the bromide print I posted above is of Christina's sister, Ann.

Anna, I think the dreamy quality is something to do with the way light is absorbed through the dye stained starch grains used to photograph in colour but I'm not technically up on the process either so don't know for certain-I just thought the pictures had an amazingly beautiful quallity about them the very first time I saw them.

[Anna Morris]

Thanks for the article, Robert, and the new picture, Debra.

There is something special about all of these pictures. I think Wiki said use of a wide aperture gave the misty background, but there is something more too. The last picture Debra posted, girl with flowers and striped shirt for instance, has an unusual appearance of depth from foreground back. I am not technically knowledgeable about photography so have no idea. But as an artist I can say these pictures are extraordinary. I could see at least some of these pictures being trademarked and used commercially. I hope the museum or the families or someone gets something nice for use of these.

[Robert Linford]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3119976/The-mystery-lady-red-solved-Philosopher-s-daughter-died-without-marrying-34-years-ago-named-blonde-teen-ethereal-1913-colour-photos.html

[Debra Arif]

Maybe there was no one "Christina" ?
The photograph I posted last above is also supposed to be titled 'Christina' but the girl in it looks slightly different to the other black and white shot labelled 'Christina' in the link Tim posted.
The girl in the bromide print I posted looks a bit like the girl in this one of O'Gorman's other 1913 autochromes to me. This is titled "girl with a bunch of flowers"

[Debra Arif]

Has anyone seen Mervyn's will? Might be a Christina Something in there.

Hi Robert, that's been checked already I read today.

[Robert Linford]

Has anyone seen Mervyn's will? Might be a Christina Something in there.

[Debra Arif]

I found something of extreme interest I think.

At: www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=8075.0 there is an ancestry discussion about O'Gorman's non existent daughter Christina. The general gist is O'Gorman and his wife married in middle age and the existing censuses list no children for the couple. This forum notes that there is, apparently in the same family, a Chrostina O'Gorman listed in the 1911 Irish census. She was 13 at that time. Her parents were James and Mary O'Gorman and they had 11 kids. The comment on this forum was they probably were happy to parcel off some of the kids to other relatives from time to time.

Could this be the answer to the original question, "Who was the lady in red", which began this thread?

If I have anything of interest here, someone mail it to the 'Daily Mail' or whoever asked the question in the first place. Give our forum here the credit...

Hi Anna, there's been discussions about who Christina was on many different forums. Christina possibly being a niece doesn't look likely as has been suggested by some as neither of Mervyn's brothers had any children named Christina according to the latest reseach. Someone has also looked into the Christina mentioned on rootsweb and her parents social status and occupation doesn't seem to indicate they are from the same family. Mervyn O'Gorman wasn't born in Ireland, he was born in Brighton and both his brothers were born in England too.

[Debra Arif]

A bromide print of Christina by Mervyn O'Gorman 1913

[Anna Morris]

I found something of extreme interest I think.

At: www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=8075.0 there is an ancestry discussion about O'Gorman's non existent daughter Christina. The general gist is O'Gorman and his wife married in middle age and the existing censuses list no children for the couple. This forum notes that there is, apparently in the same family, a Chrostina O'Gorman listed in the 1911 Irish census. She was 13 at that time. Her parents were James and Mary O'Gorman and they had 11 kids. The comment on this forum was they probably were happy to parcel off some of the kids to other relatives from time to time.

Could this be the answer to the original question, "Who was the lady in red", which began this thread?

If I have anything of interest here, someone mail it to the 'Daily Mail' or whoever asked the question in the first place. Give our forum here the credit...

[Debra Arif]

They are some of the first autochrome photographs in existence. Reds showed up particularly well in this new Edwardian era process of taking actual colour photographs, rather than tinting afterwards. The technique involved the use of dyed potato starch grains.

[Anna Morris]

I'll make a small comment/question about filming the color red which shows up in these photos.

If I use the wrong setting on my digital camera which does pretty much everything, I cannot get red or violet shades right and no amount of enhancing helps. My relative in the film industry says this is because of the wave length and that red and violet shades are the hardest to capture and get right. (I don't understand why with digital this should be so.)

So I'm wondering if the photographer who did the "Lady in Red" was working with special film or experimenting to get those red shades? The old films had some nasty glitches. The very old black and white was "blue blind" so blue eyed people tended to look like their eyes were white. Think Fatty Arbuckle or even some pictures of Lizzie Borden who was said to have had "grey" eyes though they frequently appear ice blue if we guessed the shade.

Cinematographer James Wong Howe finally overcame the blue blindness by experimenting with photographing actress Mary Miles Minter whose eyes were said to have been violet in color.