Previously, we shared storyteller Megan Wells as Abigail Adams and as Florence Nightingale, the first two in a series of historical women that Megan plays in her professional work. This week, we share the third portrait in Megan’s series, Eleanor Roosevelt.
Series Backstory and Megan Wells
For those just joining us, Megan Wells reached out to Distant Era when she saw the portraits of our mutual friend, fellow storyteller Joshua Safford. She was interested in having some of the eighteen historical women that she plays made into portraits. For Megan, one goal of this project is to feature her characters beautifully on her website and promotional materials. In addition, these portraits are to be a legacy of Megan’s work and career. We aim to evoke the essence of each character as Megan embodies her. In the end, we’ll have created a tangible visual gallery of Megan’s artistry.
Megan does all kinds of storytelling work. Just look through her website—at her resume, at her videos, at her years of interdisciplinary storytelling experience. You’ll begin to get a sense of how engaged and how skilled she is at her craft. She was the artistic director of the Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival. She performs such a wide range of characters and stories, I can’t neatly summarize them here. Instead, I’ll provide this link to her programs.
Eleanor Roosevelt
First lady of the United states between 1933 and 1945 and the longest-serving first lady in US history, which is only one of the many, many, many roles she occupied in a life of diplomacy and activism that shaped her world then and continues to shape it now.
Photography
Eleanor was the third portrait in our first session. One of our chief objectives was to distinguish each historical character from one another so that, while part of a series, each character portrait embodies its own mood; they’re not shot uniformly from the same angle against the same background with the same color palette, for example, and our lighting, photography, and editing all concentrate on the “aesthetic” of the character.
In Eleanor’s case, Megan wanted to emphasize Eleanor’s height and stature. At 5’11”, Eleanor was tall, and Megan’s ebullient Eleanor poses characterized her as a warm, larger than life personality. Thus, we photographed Eleanor from a slightly lower angle to emphasize this height, and we shot Eleanor’s portrait up close at an exaggerated 35mm rather than our average 85mm focal length for the session’s portraits—a major contrast to Florence Nightingale’s stooped posture, which we’d photographed only moments before, if you can believe it.
Because Eleanor wears a cool blue outfit with a warm brown coat over top, we changed to a blue canvas background for contrast. It seemed a good color for Eleanor. We continued shooting with soft light, but since Eleanor lived in the era of flash photography, a painterly look didn’t seem right for her, and I found few references to Eleanor in painted portraits. Eleanor therefore looks more like she’s being captured in a camera portrait rather than a painting.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Behind Eleanor, we placed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1949, a special committee of the United Nations chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt drafted this declaration. In its thirty articles, it establishes the individual fundamental rights of all humans, regardless of “nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status.” Though not legally binding, the declaration is a constitutional template for establishing human rights, as well as treaties. It has greatly influenced such contracts, and its articles have been adopted by many nations since its creation.
Eleanor’s red pen represents her connection to great document, and its color contrasts nicely with the blue background. Since the pen is a small but important prop, contrasting its color with the background was important. Photographing Eleanor at 35mm also made the pen appear larger as it neared the camera’s lens, which helped give weight to the pen’s importance in the image.
A Gallery of Eleanor
Here are a few other shots from the Eleanor portion of our session, with Megan alternating Eleanor’s demeanor from warmth to enthusiasm to contemplation.
Megan Wells Historical Portraiture Gallery
It is an honor to work with Megan on this project. It’s thrilling to witness her inhabit these characters so completely—in voice, in physicality, in spirit. I’m amazed at how she summons them into the present, as well as how present she is as each character in every frame we photograph.
Here are the two portraits we’ve made thus far in the Megan Wells gallery of historical women: Abigail Adams, Florence Nightingale, and Eleanor Roosevelt. I’m excited to add to the gallery as we finish more and more of them.
An Anecdote
In 2020, my dad told me that he saw Eleanor Roosevelt once, at the Kennedy inauguration. His family lived in Washington, D.C. My dad was in the fourth grade, and he really wanted to see the PT 109 U-boat featured in the parade. He says it was about twenty degrees on inauguration day, and his feet were cold. As he waited to see the U-boat, he witnessed a car in the parade that received particular attention. When he asked his mother who was in the car, she said, “That’s Eleanor Roosevelt, a very important woman in the history of our country.” The year was 1961, the year before her passing. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard this story before!
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