Scope and Content Note
The photographic materials from the scrapbooks of journalist Janet Flanner and Solita Solano span the years 1870-1968, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1920-1968. The scrapbooks originally consisted of six volumes which contained photographs, letters, clippings, poems, and other miscellaneous items. These volumes were microfilmed by the Manuscript Division for preservation considerations. The photographs were then removed and transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division. There are many individual and group portraits, mostly informal. Most people are identified and many images have brief hand-written captions.
The images document the lives and careers of Flanner and Solano -- two American expatriate women who lived in Paris between the world wars and who both contributed significantly to the historical and literary identity of America. Their collective contributions of journalistic essays, critical essays, prose, poetry, and memoirs provide a continuous account of literary thought from a woman's perspective between 1900 and 1940. Both Flanner and Solano were particularly interested in promoting the cumulative achievements of their women friends as avant-garde authors, poets, painters, bookshop and salon owners, 'little magazine' editors, publishers, and photographers. Noteworthy in this circle of friends are photographers Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philippe Halsman, Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, George Platt Lynes, Curtis Moffat, and Carl Van Vechten, editor Margaret Anderson, publisher Nancy Cunard, editor Jane Heap, opera singer Georgette Leblanc, author Carson McCullers, writer Gertrude Stein, and publisher Alice B. Toklas, who are all represented in the visual materials.
Also documented are many prominent literary and artistic individuals who were friends and acquaintances of Flanner and Solano, such as Enrico Caruso, Ernest Hemingway, Russell Page, Francis Rose, and James Thurber. Other friends and associates also include Dorothy Caruso, Elizabeth Jenks Clark, Isak Dinesen, Georges I. Gurdjieff, Kathryn Hulme, Georgette Leblanc, Mary McCarthy, Noel Haskins Murphy, and Olga Petrova. Assorted visual images found with the scrapbooks are drawings, watercolor sketches, prints, and miscellaneous photographs, some of which are gift presentations to Flanner. The images provide a retrospective, yet an intimate insight into intellectual life in New York City and Paris during the first half of the 20th century.
The collection includes tintypes, some sketches, drawings, and many prints. A blind stamp with the photographer's name appear on many photos and a photographer's stamp on versos of many. There are a number of different types of variants, i.e. cropped differently to produce variations in image content and size differences (e.g. where on is 8x10 and the other is 4x5) found within the materials. Most photographs are identified and dated.