Annette Kellerman
Datec 1907
Object number00029949
NamePhotograph
MediumBlack and white photographic print on paper.
DimensionsOverall: 240 x 160 mm, 0.01 kg
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Paula Stafford
Collections
DescriptionThis studio photograph shows the famous Australian swimmer and silent Hollywood film star Annette Kellerman wearing a very daring one piece swimsuit and posing with her hand gracefully outstretched. Kellerman produced several studio photographs of herself in different poses as illustrations for her book 'Physical beauty, how to keep it.', published by G H Doran Company in New York in 1918.
This photographic print was given to Gold Coast swimwear designer Paula Stafford in the 1960s by Annette Kellerman, after she moved to Surfers Paradise in retirement.HistoryAnnette Kellerman went to the USA in 1906 where she performed a range of dives and swimming techniques for audiences in Chicago and Boston. The media interest she attracted fuelled her ambitions for the stage and instigated a vocation in vaudeville theatres. Kellerman later realised her aquatic talents could go further and pursued a career in silent cinema, in which she performed a range of roles including the mythical mermaid, mysterious beauty and assertive heroine. There is a range of surviving photographs of Kellerman in her numerous guises, usually emphasising her athletic prowess. Kellerman would often be depicted staring directly at the viewer and confident and sensual wearing a tightly fitted swimsuit, much like this early still of her.
Images of her acquire even more significance when placed against a social and cultural context that espoused ideas of moral decency, propriety and femininity. Throughout her career, Kellerman gave lectures on women’s health and fitness and published two books in 1918, 'Physical Beauty and How to Keep It' and 'How to Swim'. She played a significant role in objecting to the ‘prudish and Puritanical’ ideas about women’s swimwear and purporting more practical swimsuit designs. When she was in England, she staved off accusations of impropriety by sewing a pair of stockings to the legs of her men’s swimsuit. Overall, her books are self-referential and self-congratulatory but there are other messages to be gleaned from its pages, centring on the importance of women’s health.
Though not quite a rebel, Kellerman created her own vocation and spoke to her audiences in a way that confronted real issues for women. She acknowledged the fickle nature of the film industry and the necessity to reinvent herself and what she called her ‘vogue’. This carefully fabricated image was fed by the print media disseminating the mythology that surrounded the swimming star. One widely reported myth is that Kellerman was arrested at a Boston beach in 1908 for indecent exposure. There is no recorded evidence of the arrest, even though newspapers reported – well after the event allegedly occurred – a ‘shocked howl’ that ‘went up and down the land’ and made ‘world-wide headlines’ resulting in Kellerman being ‘denounced as a wanton’. Given the sensationalism it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Though undoubtedly a talented swimmer, Annette Kellerman was the consummate performer, morphing into many personas to suit the context and audience. She captured the mystery of the female form, which she used to her advantage through revealing costumes and clingy swimsuits. Underneath the surface, however, were messages about women’s health and the need for practical swimwear designs. Whatever the truth or fiction behind the persona, one fact remains clear: Kellerman challenged social and cultural boundaries.
For her, swimming fed the ‘imagination’ and allowed her to escape and ‘forget a black earth full of people that push’. Through various media, she displayed how the streamlined swimsuit or the exotic costume represented freedom and vitality.
Sources:
Nicole Cama, 'The mermaid from Marrickville', Signals 99 (June - August 2012): 60-61.
Nicole Cama, 'Object of the Week: The Mermaid from Marrickville', ANMM blog 16/03/2012.SignificanceThe photograph is an important record of the friendship between the champion swimmer, actor and performer, Annette Kellerman, and Gold Coast swimwear designer, Paula Stafford. The photograph was given to Stafford late in Kellerman's life, after she had retired to the Gold Coast.