Unequivocal Magic (Sarah Bernhardt and the Journey of a Portrait)

Unequivocal Magic speaks to the “quiet power” of photographs and their hidden creativity, bringing readers into the author’s own journey into the history of a 1910 portrait of iconic French actress, Sarah Bernhardt. What begins as a quest to recognize the work of her once renowned photographer, Walter Barnett, becomes a story about the female performer in the West, whose use of image to innovate, protest, and survive public scrutiny can provide an enduring agency.

Alex Bertram has always found old photographs intriguing, an interest augmented by her work as a picture researcher for a publisher. On a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, she saw a 1910 portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, the famous French actress whose career by then had spanned half a century. Beset with questions about this unidealized representation of the actress in her older age, she wondered what the photograph could tell us about Bernhardt, its photographer, or the circumstances surrounding the making of the portrait.

Structured around the day Bernhardt had her picture taken in that London studio, Unequivocal Magic traces the travel of the portrait on its life journey, with Bertram returning again and again to this single day in 1910. Bertram’s narrative likewise embraces her own creative response upon seeing the portrait for the first time, enveloping that moment into her engagement with and close examination of the lives and work of both Barnett and Bernhardt.