The 1930s, Photography, and Virginia Woolf's Flush

• Published in: Photography & culture 2010-03, Vol.3 (1), p.7-17
• Main Author: Humm, Maggie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: flush; modernism; photography; Woolf
• ISSN: 1751-4517; 1751-4525
• DOI: 10.2752/175145110X12615814378117

By the early 1930s modernist vocabularies were being shaped by new photographic strategies of montage, close-ups, unusual viewpoints, and sharp tonal contrasts. The new style was conspicuously urban both in subject matter and imagery. Yet Virginia Woolf's key urban novel of the early 1930s-Flush-is rarely considered in relation to the ubiquity of modernist visual photography. Virginia Woolf, however, like many other modernist writers, was an experienced amateur photographer, owning in succession Frenas, vest-pocket Kodaks, and, in 1931, a Zeiss camera. The Woolfs took more than 1,000 domestic photographs and, willingly or unwillingly, Woolf was the subject of many professional photographs. This article analyzes Flush's use of photographic tropes and the use of photography in Woolf's companion works "Aurora Leigh," "The Cinema," and Three Guineas in terms of modernist photography and Woolf's specific camera expertise. By demonstrating the significance of the visual in a text usually praised for its olfactory sensuality, the article aims to demonstrate the impact of photography on modernist writing.