Edith an Little Bear Lend a Hand

Dare Wright’s Edith and Little Bear Lend a Hand

A few years back I read Jean Nathan’s gripping biography of Dare Wright and my childhood came flooding back upon me. I was compelled to reconstruct the holdings of the great books by Wright for both my own library and for the ICP Library – for different reasons. The home library books need not be in presentable condition – even ex-library – because I had read many of them as books signed out of the library and ICP’s set, in our glass cased rare book cupboard, would need to be in better condition, hoping that Dare Wright would not be lost to posterity.

Is it the intriguing, I daresay cinematic, story of Dare Wright that makes her a great subject for posterity? Not to me as a librarian. I recognize that Jean Nathan and I are characteristic of girls who were influenced visually and emotionally by that Lenci doll and her Steiff bear companions. These were great photographic books in the definition of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger.

In recent re-readings, I increasingly realize that the photographs were the meat of the matter, not the text.

Case in point is the ICP Library’s splendid book Edith and Little Bear Lend a Hand, which seems so very timely in the weeks following our observance of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and how “green” is now an “idea” embraced by every corporation, no matter how oxymoronic.

Edith, a stand-in for Dare Wright, already retirement aged when she wrote the book, was standing up for a cleaner New York City in this book. She protests, she acts progressively, and dresses fabulously.

I had never visited New York when I first checked this book out of the library, yet its visuals captivated me…

What makes Dare Wright great as a photographer?

Anthropomorphizing toys as fully-fleshed emotional people through pose and gesture and point of view
The stimulating mix of real NYC streets and toys integrated into them
The great compositions and shadows, like New York street photography