Little escap(ad)e: Ré Soupault

A few weeks ago my husband brought home a flyer with the year’s program for the „Ostdeutsche Galerie“ in Regensburg. As I had never been to that museum yet and was looking for another nice exhibition worthy of a “little escap(ad)e”, I decided to take the opportunity. Together with two friends we planned a day’s outing to Regensburg to see the retrospective for Ré Soupault. Admittedly, I had never heard of her before, but the text in the flyer sounded intriguing.

Ré was obviously a woman with her very own mind. Born in 1901 as Erna Niemeyer – same age as my grandmother! – she was a student at the Bauhaus, where she was very much influenced by Itten, whose ‘Vorkurs’ she took twice. However, she got sidetracked into being technical assistant to Viking Eggeling for his “Diagonal Symphony”, the first abstract film. She never graduated from Bauhaus officially because she disliked the change towards a more functionalized orientation after Bauhaus moved to Dessau. She then started working as a fashion journalist for a Berlin fashion magazine, went to Paris as their correspondent and reported on the latest French fashion trends for the modern German woman. Eventually she started her own fashion business as “Ré Sport”, developed what she called the “transformation dress” and wanted to make wearable fashion for the modern working woman.

"transformation dress" by Ré Soupault

When her financial partner died in a car accident, she had to close her shop, however. She met French surrealist Phillipe Soupault and started traveling with him on his reporter trips through Europe. She picked up photography along the way, taking the pictures for his stories in Spain, Norway, Paris and other places. After their marriage in 1938 they moved to Tunisia where he was building a radio station, she took photos, most famous among them her pictures from the ‘reserved quarters’, where women without any family connection (and often without any other income than prostitution) lived.

Catalogue page with pictures from "reserved quarter"

During the war her husband got arrested and was imprisoned for six months. After that they left Tunisia for Algiers on a bus and had to leave everything behind, including all her photographic equipment. Parts of her belongings were recovered by a friend who found them for sale at a bazar a few years later.
Eventually they went to the States, where she started working as a translator. They traveled to South America, too, and there she ‘shot’ her famous self-portrait at a Buenos Aires fair: shooting, and hitting dead center, she took a picture of herself .

shooting her own picture: Ré Soupault

After the war the couple separated, but she eventually went back to Europe, working as a translator (she translated Romain Rolland and Lautréamont, who had up to then be considered intranslatable) and for various radio stations, producing radio reports on a wide array of topics. She had kept contact with her husband and got back together with him, and with the help of his German publisher the photographs from her photographic period were published.
These are just the briefest outlines of her long and restless life, taken from the wonderful catalogue that accompanies the exhibiton – she died in 1996, aged 95, having experienced that her creative work was beginning to be recognized.

Catalogue to the exhibition

The exhibition in Regensburg is a well-documented introduction into her life, her various kinds of work, and her multiple connections with the crème de la crème of the avantgarde.
What strikes me about her, is that she did not let unfavourable circumstances bring her down. She left, closed that period of her life, started again, something new, and again she turned out to be very good at what she was doing. Filmmaker, fashion reporter, fashion designer, photographer, translator, radio reporter – what a list of occupations! And obviously she had a talent not to worry about the past – she simply closed that period of her life for herself and went on. Which is one reason why her photographs, after her friend had recovered them on the Tunisian bazar, remained unrecognized for forty years – she had not bothered to really open the box which held what was left of her negatives.


Another interesting photographer emerging from a box, although much more seems to be known about her than about Vivian Meier.
The exhibition is still on until the 4th of September. Well worth seeing!

Daily Oak - July report

Number of days missed: 11
Number of days with more than one visit: 5
Number of visits with more than the two standard perspectives taken: 6
Guest trees: 2
Total number of pictures taken: 59


Because of my stay in Switzerland I missed a number of days in the beginning of the month during which I was too busy to actually run around looking for a good supply of guest trees. Also, we left for our summer vacation before the month was over, so this was a month with fewer pictures taken than most of the previous months.
And it was a month with very little sunshine. However, I did manage to catch sunny spots, and the days with two visits were definitely caused by the urge to see the tree with a slightly more cheerful sky in the background than I had seen on the first visit.

perspective a, July 21, 4:11 p.m.

perspective a, July 21, 6:41 p.m.

perspective b, July 21, 4:12 p.m.

perspective b, July 21, 6:42 p.m.

perspective c, July 21, 6:41 p.m.

But I have been promising to talk about Daily Oak’s age for a couple of months now, and this is what I am going to do in this July-report.


My husband gave me a present for my birthday in connection with my Daily Oak project, namely a book on „Germany’s old trees“.
According to the authors’ standards, trees are considered „old“ when they have reached a certain circumference, measured around the stem at 1 m above the ground. So I engaged my son’s help one day, and together we found out that “my” oak measures approximately 440 cm around the stem (at approximately 1m above the ground). Although I hadn’t really thought about the precise number to expect, I have to admit that I was surprised. It just seemed a lot to me. Of course, it doesn’t qualify as ‚old’ by the book’s standards, which, for oaks, starts at a circumference of approximately 7 m. Still far from being considered an old tree, then.
After my return from Switzerland my husband gave me another book, this time on "Europe’s old trees". This author spends much more time trying to figure out the age of various individual trees in Europe, different kinds of trees in different countries, and in rather different types of locations. When comparing the discussions of the ages of oak trees it turns out that their circumferences may vary considerably, even when the author seems to have information regarding first mentionings of the trees, or growth rates since a certain point in time. These differences are impressive and may span more than a couple of hundred years for years assumed to be of the same age. Some oaks that already ‘qualify’ for inclusion in his list by sheer size are assumed to be much younger than others.


There is another impressive oak nearby ‘my’ oak which I pass every day when I go to take my pictures. I did not choose it for my project because it is standing in a private garden and much less picturesque due to the fence it is enclosed by. It has been marked a ‘Naturdenkmal’ by the regional conservation agency, and when I asked the owner about its age he told me that the officials think it is over three hundred years old. But they don’t know – it was there long before the house was built, and that has been standing for over a hundred years. I was allowed to measure the tree’s circumference, which is 550 cm at approximately 1m above ground.

550 cm in circumference:
the other oak tree on my way to Daily Oak

In order to be able to make something of these measurements I then went to a sawmill specializing in cutting large trees (koenigbauer) and asked them what they knew about the age and growth rate of oak trees. Experts, after all. They said you really can’t ever tell unless you cut it down and count the growth rings. Don’t want to do this, of course. But I was given two slices of oak, both of which still included the center part, and an outer edge. They were of a noticeably different size – but, when I counted the rings indicating the number of years, it turned out they were not that much different in age: the larger piece had only five years more to it than the smaller piece.

two slices of oak, almost of the same age

So I counted the rings in the section where they were most densely next to each other, indicating hard years for the trees and a slow growth rate, and those in the section where they were farthest apart, indicating good years and a more rapid growth rate. Then I calculated these into the circumference (I actually got to use what I learned in math at school!). The result? Well, if it had only good years, my oak would be just about one hundred years old. If it had only hard years it might be well above three hundred years. The truth is not to be known, but probably somewhere in the middle – shall we say it is 220 years old?

"Metamorphoses XI" for Africa

When we had the art exhibit in shop windows of our little town in May that I reported about on my German blog, the organizer of it all had also suggested that every participating artist donate one of their works for an art auction. The revenues of this auction were supposed to be donated for a help organization for children with cancer.

I had donated a quilt from my series ‚Metamorphoses’:

Metamorphoses XI: Weber's Gold

Metamorphoses XI: Weber’s Gold was made in 2006, after I had been given a few pieces of golden-colored silk. They had been cut for a dress, which had never been finished. These pieces were the original inspiration for this quilt, and the donator’s name (Weber) also led to the quilt’s name.

All of the donated pieces of art had been on display in one of the shop windows during the days before the scheduled auction date. However, on the day of auction it rained heavily, there were hardly any people there to attend the auction, and the whole thing was cancelled. At first it wasn’t clear whether it was only postponed or had been called off entirely. By now, however, the „Kultursommer“-festival is over and it is not clear whether there will be another good occasion for such an event.

A few days later I was approached by the director of the kindergarten where my son has been going for the past four years. She and her colleague would have liked to bid in the auction for my quilt because they had decided that this finally was the piece they had been looking for for their office, what was going to happen with it? I checked back about a new date for the auction, and when I found out that that was most likely not going to happen, we agreed that she would be very happy to buy the quilt for the minimal bid that had been set for the auction.  This is a wonderful way for me to say thank you for four years of loving caretaking of my son.  The director had made it very clear that she was happy to give me the money directly and thus let me have the benefits from the sale. However, I have decided to donate the money nevertheless. I have been very much affected by the news from Somalia, and especially by the numbers of children in need, malnourished or dyeing. So I topped up the amount I received for Meamorphoses by a good part of the profits I made during the last month of good sales and chose the Welthungerhilfe  instead to help alleviate the suffering in Africa’s East. It's little enough that I can do.

Ice-Cube-Dyeing: Report in German "Patchwork Professional" magazine

In December I wrote about our heaps of snow, their effect on my dyeing, and presented a few results. When I was busy ironing the first wonderfully colorful and lively results I started thinking about water and its functionality in dyeing. 

Experiment with snow, this time in a flower pot...

These thoughts turned into a sort of meditation, after all I was still ironing the traditional way, not my most favourite activity in the world and one has to do one’s best to enrich that time...

Waiting to be ironed: snow-dyed fabrics on the line

That meditation centered on the state of matter of water, and the influence that might have on the behavior of dyes, and on the results of dyeing processes. When I was finished with my ironing and at the end of my meditation, I had come up with a new idea: ice-cube dyeing.

A few days of experimenting followed, as I still had a sufficient supply of soda-ash-soaked fabric from my snow-dyeing. Our ice-cube trays had been sitting idly in our kitchen cupboards anyway (we usually have a bottle of water in the fridge, that’s cold enough for us.) 

When I had found out what I was doing, I contacted the German magazine Patchwork Professional. The result is now in print – the newest edition hit the newsstalls yesterday.

Title page of the newest edition (03/2011)
 of Patchwork Professional magazine

View inside the magazine

I will probably give a (sort of) English translation of the workshop article here later in the fall.

Meanwhile you can buy fabrics that have been dyed with this technique via my website justcolours.de (sorry – in German only…), under the tag „Stoffunikate“ (unique fabrics). The site is updated frequently, whenever I have a new stack of fabrics finished. Check it out, and enjoy!

Inspirational pictures

Some inspirational pictures from my recent stay in Switzerland.

Whoever would have thought…

Life is full of surprises. And the best surprises are those that one gives oneself, taking decisions one would never have thought oneself able to. Or doing things one would never have thought possible. When I was a student in Freiburg way back I wouldn’t have believed I would end up in Bavaria. Now I know that it’s not at all a bad place to live. Not to mention some slightly more private matters I don’t want to talk about here.

So here is the newest surprise in my life: ironing is fun!

Excuse me? Yes, ironing is fun. I am a regular at the dry cleaner’s with my husband’s shirts because I hate ironing, and for my own clothes I usually choose to hang them up dripping wet, taking no offense at a few wrinkles, just to avoid ironing, and now this? Of course pressing seams when sewing a new quilt – fine, that’s ok. Ironing newly hand-dyed fabrics in order to give them their final shape, yes, that’s ok, too, But fun?

Well – I have a ‘new’ rotary iron. Of course, it is old, because I have inherited it from an elderly lady preparing to move to a retirement home. But it is just about wide enough for my fabrics.

I had been asking virtually everybody whether they knew of somebody who would be willing to part with their rotary iron. But nobody wants to give up theirs. But finally, in April, my friend Nina gave a positive answer, she knew somebody who would want to give up hers in the fall. I made it very clear that I would be very interested – and a few days later she called back I could have it now, all we had to do was organize the transport.

Kindly enough Nina engaged her nephew to help, and my husband was also willing. Little did we know what we had got ourselves into!

These things are HEAVY! And we had to take it down one flight of stairs first, put it into the car, and then down into the cellar.

on the way down

When they were half-way down the stairs I was ready to give up, pull it back up and put it somewhere in the living room on the ground floor, I was so afraid that thing would fall off the cart and crush the two persons holding it from below. But they did manage to get it down safe and sound in the end. My husband complained about an aching shoulder for a few days and threatened to divorce me if I ever wanted another transport of a rotary iron done by him. But it’s there.

The 'new' machine...

And I have used it.

And it is fun…

Daily Oak - middle of month extra

On the day of my return from Switzerland we had a tremendous thunderstorm in the evening. And I managed to catch Daily Oak with an impressive rainbow, although from a perspective which is not part of the art project. The rainbow extended for the complete half circle, which, however, my camera could not handle.