Ellen Nolan

Nita Harvey Archive

(Work in progress )

360 Degree Casting Stills

Three years ago my aunt gave me a suitcase. Inside it was an archive of hundreds of images and documents belonging to my Great Aunt Nita.

Nita Harvey was an English actress on the brink of Hollywood success. In 1933 she was discovered through a beauty contest, summoned to Hollywood and signed to Paramount studios. Nita was prepared for performing by her mother, who constantly photographed her.

I have been working with photography, film, newspaper and magazine articles, letters, telegrams, diaries and notebooks that document the journey of a young actress photographed both from an industry perspective and from her mothers perspective. The words on the images are taken from Nita’s diaries, notes and letters.

Journal of Photography & Culture article

Casting film still

Digitised film still from a 35mm Nitrate film show reel, c.1930. This is a still from a silent two-minute casting film found in my Great Aunt, Nita Harvey's archive. The still is chosen from a sequence where the actress stands behind a chalk line and turns around on-the -spot whilst the camera pans up and down her body, taking in every angle.

Cheque book dyptich

This is a diptych still of Nita Harvey's cheque books which were found in her archive amongst other possessions, ephemera, photographs and documents. The cheque book (c.1930) refers to Nita's high earning potential at the start of her acting career. It also raises questions about what we choose to keep and what we throw away. The archive and its contents is a reminder of this notion and what remaining objects may mean about us.

Nita in Box

This image is a digital photograph, taken in a studio, depicting archival Paramount press photographs, in their original photography box. The image is an exploration of an analogue archival photograph, its packaging as an object that is tangible, and something that can be handled and touched and as such is real. The image explores the notion of a lasting artefact that has been recorded through a digital process. The sensibility of both mediums are brought together here to consider.

Salome dance back garden

This is a digital montage of a series of negatives (c.1930) found in the archive. This is a playful example of a performance narrative photographed in Nita's back garden, Golders Green, London, by a family member (her mother, father or possibly her lover). Nita wears a bed sheet and gentleman’s shirt cuffs as ankle bracelets. There is a powerfully erotic and cinematic quality present in this image, reminiscent of the intoxicating potential of performance. This montage explores notions of family photography and narrative performance within the archive.

Local photographic supplies

This is a digital example of photography ephemera found in the archive. The paper bag as object (c.1930) is a reminder of the analogue process in photographic practices of the era and their public availability. The image documents the fact that 'All photographic supplies and portraits' were available through local independent merchants, who in this case also dealt in 'Gramophones, records, theatre and travel tickets'. The photograph prompts us to consider the idea of the real and tangible as recorded through modern digital photography, questioning whether the archival object thus, can retain its own form and character.

Home Portrait with Nitrate film

This Nitrate negative has been drum scanned in gelatine in order to best document the natural photographic occurrence in the degradation of the Nitrate negative through time. A linear pattern on the surface occurs on the black and white negative, along with a surfacing of colour, both vivid reminders of mechanical and chemical processes.

Passport booth

These eleven images are passport booth photographs (c.1928). Nita practices her acting and performance skills in the anonymity and privacy of a photo booth. The images are taken pre 'talkies', in the silent film era where such stars as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were favoured celebrities to emulate. Much of Nita's exaggerated expressions lend themselves to the silent film genre as she visually and comically dialogues with her own image and the invisible camera and imagined (and now realised) audience behind it. The images, even in passport size, retain an incredible technical quality, which is best showcased in an enlarged digital format.

London Theatre Rooftop

This triptych is a series of three analogue prints (c.1930) found in the archive. The photographs document a group of young and hopeful actresses signed to a professional acting company called 'The Weiland Agency', London. Their agent appears in the middle of the left image. These images were probably taken for press and marketing purposes and sent out to relevant film and theatres companies and producers for viewing.

Diary

This is an early, adolescent album sketchbook from the archive that belonged to Nita (c1924). The romantic sketch of a dancer in a tulle skirt is hand drawn by Nita in pencil. Opposite, the text suggests this leather-bound album/ sketch book is a gift from her father. Underneath this encryption she playfully writes, 'If this book should care to roam box its ears and send it home'. Perhaps a timely reminder of the vast difference between the former sketching of ones’ dreams in private and the modern posturing of them on social media.

Pyjama Case Score to memorise

This diptych is a digital image of a hand written musical score and a satin pajama case, c.1930 (that holds sixteen pairs of arm length fringed Kidd leather gloves) from Nita's archive.

Some of the verse from the score reads, 'For the love of all that's free'. This along with the title of the score, 'Victory letter', probably date it at around 1945. The score would be from a staged musical number that Nita would have memorized and performed. The satin case houses the numerous gloves that Nita wore on and off stage.

Card Heads

This is a collage of a selection of photographic heads of Nita that she has (probably) cut out herself from very stiff original photographic paper resembling card. The heads are taken from varying periods of Nita's film & theatre acting career. Placed together they intend to create a playful dialogue that explores self- This diptych is created from archival prints taken consecutively for commercially and family photographic purposes. The diptych explores the importance of context and the remarkable difference of each approach, juxtaposed with the similarity of pose, scale and costume.

Two costumes

This is from a series of performative portraits taken of Nita, in the run up and preparation of her winning a contract with Paramount Pictures. In this image and subsequent sets, and indeed throughout the archive, Nita maintains a growing identity and confidence with her own image. The number written on the left-hand image denotes the objectification of the subject, Nita, and is countered by the familial ease with which the right-hand image resonates.

Back garden performance

This image is the second digital montage in the series, from a series of family negatives (taken by either Nita's mother or father) where Nita performs to camera, this time in an unknown role. There is a motif of flowers throughout, along with the mirror on her lap that Nita gazes into, bringing to mind notions of narcissus, self-image, representation and the symbolism of flowers as female sexual metaphor. The repetitive taking of sequential and narrative family images within the archive perhaps underscore a longing for a lasting family representation of Nita.

London Theatre land with Mascot

This contact sheet from the archive (c.1930) documents what are possibly self-publicity photographs featuring Nita, an industry colleague and their mascot. The group poses outside a theatre that advertises a play that Nita and her colleague are featured in. The cutting out, gluing down, numbering and marking of the analogue 35mm contact sheet gives us insight to Nita's photographic self-publicity approach. There is a charm to these images, that has been arguably lost in process in our modern selfie era.

Backstage Dressing room

This is a digital montage of a series of two sittings taking place in theatre dressing rooms, where Nita prepares herself for the stage. A professional photographer would probably have been commissioned by Nita's agent or the theatre company. The repetition, reflection and geometric lines in the montage are intended to create a tableau effect, where the viewers’ eyes linger and flow back and forth remaining contained within the image and mirror.

Broken glass plate negative

This image is a digital Gelatin scan of a broken glass plate publicity negative from the archive, c.1930. It was taken around the time of the casting film, and also close in time to when Nita signed her acting contract with Paramount Pictures.

There is a definitiveness to the image as object within the archive because of in its damage it creates a narrative. There is a subtle brutality and foreboding in the way the crack appears so close to Nitas throat. As if to emphasise this, Nita is posed in a submissive pose that was a popular way of posing actresses in photographs at that time. There is both a tangible fragility and a steadfastness that echoes throughout the photographic medium and its subject.

Paramount Studio Press photograph

This is a digital diptych made from the archive, featuring Nita and two fellow cast members, posing for a publicity still on the film set, 'Search for Beauty', (Paramount 1933). The right image in the diptych shows a Chinagraph inscription by Nita who formed a habit of inscribing the details of each photograph on the back, throughout the archive.

In 1933, Nita won the UK female place for Paramount Pictures international 'search for beauty' competition, resulting in the winners (three of whom, including Nita are photographed here) being brought to Hollywood, signed as Paramount 'properties' and appearing in the feature film.

In the diptych, the surface of the photograph illuminates the studio colourama paper, retracting light, whilst the rigidity and sturdiness of the photograph itself stands alone in a proud and definite arc, casting a shadow behind itself and reinforcing its own object-like form. When positioned, the curved photograph makes the brief, flat, low pitched reverberating sound of card on paper.

British Film Corps WW11

This is a digital image taken of a single frame from a British Film Corps WW11 movie called Sky Raiders. During WWII the British government made films every month as a tool to boost British cinema audience moral. This still was taken from a Steenbeck editing table. The physical and sensory experience of viewing an analogue film in a darkened room is hinted at here.

It is possible to see the curve of the screen and the image of the sound waves as they run in parallel with the frozen image.

This image continues to explore the enduring legacy of archival analogue and the notion of film viewing experiences and practices in relation to current digital viewing formats.

There is also an enduring legacy of humour here that seems to transcend time.

Press cuttings

This is a digital still of Nita's scrap book from her archive, that contains a detailed collection of newspaper press cuttings and magazine articles that feature her acting career. Nita annotates these cuttings in ink through-out the scrap book.

The photograph is a depiction of the scrapbook as object and lasting archival memento. The book is well used and well-loved and although slightly dog-eared seems curiously robust whilst being simultaneously fragile.

The photograph aims to beckon the viewer in to open the album- a format that although becoming increasingly rare, maintains its legacy through its physicality.

Paramount studio portrait

This is a full digital scan of a large format 10 x 8 inch negative of Nita, probably taken for Paramount studio publicity, c.1930. The negative itself is approximately 1mm thick, the chemical process and the film material serving directly to produce a depth of tonal range and metallic quality unattainable in digital technology.

The use of a flower appears again in the archive, this time resembling a crown, which along with the rich velvet fabric wrapped around Nita's shoulders, lends a somewhat seductively regal theatricality to the image. The photograph is of type for the period, in that studios would use visual props and narrative strategies to elevate their players in the hope of creating the enduring imprint of stardomfrom a series of performative portraits taken of Nita, in the run up and preparation of her winning a contract with Paramount Pictures. In this image and subsequent sets, and indeed throughout the archive, Nita maintains a growing identity and confidence with her own image.