WOMAN SOCIETY PHOTOGRAPHER

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28264, 30 April 1957, Page 2

WOMAN SOCIETY PHOTOGRAPHER

Permanent Home In England (By SUSAN VAUGHAN] After years of travelling to and from the United States, society photographer Dorothy Wilding has returned to London to stay. “I can still travel, and I might go off to Texas tomorrow, for instance. But I am making my permanent home in England.” she tells me. Miss Wilding—she took the portraits of the Queen which are used on both British and Canadian stamps—is giving up her New York studio. But this dynamic woman is by no means contemplating retirement; she is now busy preparing to open a second studio in Britain. For almost 40 years she has been in the photographic profession—“don't you dare call it a business”—and she is still taking photographs herself. It would be interesting to know her real age, but she will not be drawn. “I never tell lies,” she explains. “But the other day I met a woman I hadn’t seen for 20 years, and she told me I looked 10 years younger than when she last saw me.” Miss Wilding, I think, will greatly miss the fast and furious life of bustling New York, where her regular clients included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and many Hollywood stars. She particularly likes the American climate. “It is very stimulating, and there are such blue, blue skies,” she says. “It is very cold in the winter, but you don’t seem to feel it somehow.” Usually, she finds that film or stage personalities are her most photogenic customers, and it is a good line of cheek-bone, she says, that attracts her most. She has one encouraging word for British women. “I think that the men are generally better looking in England than in America.”