My Femme Fatale – Part One

1961

April 1962

December 1962

30/12/1966

Some years ago I bought a group of booth strips of the same woman.  The photos were from France.  I thought they were a brilliant find, showing the same lady through two relationships and many different fashionable hairstyles of the 1960s.  In the images of her alone, I imagine her popping into a booth on the way home from her hairdresser to record the newest “do”.  Above are four of the 14 strips.  Only seven of the group are dated.  There is no indication as to the place they were taken on any of them.  As with most of my collection, I feel a certain proprietary relationship with each sitter, especially if I have more than one  photo covering a period of time.  Thus I was delighted when my lovely lady came into my life again earlier this year, in a most surprising way, of which I will tell you more in a later post.

My Femme Fatale – Part Two

March 1968

Chronologically, this is the next of the dated booth photos of the series of 14 of my lovely French lady. This strip was cut, as you can see.  I especially love this photo as my sister was born in the same month and year.  Why does that make any difference?  I suppose I enjoy seeing what else was going on in another private world at a significant time in the life of my family, similarities and differences, another incarnation of the period. I am amused by the fact that at around the same era, my mum had a furry hat very similar to the one worn above and she was also fond of the same type of fashionable silk scarf.

My Femme Fatale – Part Three

29/05/1968

15/08/1968

These are the last two strips of dated photos from my mysterious, beautiful French lady.  Looking glamourous in her pearls and just as chic in her more casual stripes, she is the image of a 1960s conservative yet fashionable young thing. There are eight strips of undated images to come soon.

My Femme Fatale – Part Four

These two strips of undated photos from my mysterious French lady show her with the second and last of her lovers in the series of photos in my collection. Is this the man she stayed with? She certainly looks very happy with him.

My Femme Fatale – Part Five

 

Here is my lovely French lady once again.  I gave up trying to guess what order the photos were taken, so have just selected them randomly.  I don’t think it really matters what order we see them in. She is photogenic and interesting in any of her snaps, no matter when they were shot. There are two more strips to show you before the big reveal about how she came back into my life. Stay tuned!

My Femme Fatale – Part Six

These are the last two strips of my beguiling femme fatale. Tomorrow I will conclude this series with how ma belle dame mystérieuse re-entered my life earlier this year.

A Friend and Photobooth Dogs – My Femme Fatale – Part Seven

One day, earlier this year I received the above book in the post from the USA. In addition to collecting photobooth photos and ephemera, I also collect books about photobooth photos, of which there are a surprising number.  This one Photobooth Dogs by Cameron Woo was published in 2010.  Over the previous year or two, I had noticed in my online shopping adventures, that vintage booth photos that included a dog, were going for higher and higher prices. I fully expected to see one or two pups that I recognised in this book.

Having made myself a cup of tea, I settled down for a long peruse. There were some stunning snaps of dogs alone or with their owners, big and small, cooperative and not so cooperative but the photos that really grabbed my attention were of an unexpectedly familiar face.  There was My Femme Fatale in all her glory with a companion I hadn’t seen before; a fuzz-faced poodle. It had been some time since I had looked at my French collection, so before mentioning my discovery to anyone, I sought them out to confirm that it was indeed my lady.

And here she is forever immortalised in print – living on in the book, in my blog, in my collection and my imagination.