Pool Group
Encyclopedia
The Pool Group were a trio of interwar period artists, filmmakers and poets consisting of Hilda Doolittle, Kenneth Macpherson
and Bryher
(Annie Winifred Ellerman). Their work has been studied by poetry
and film historians as well as by scholars of mysticism
, feminism
, psychoanalysis
and LGBT history. They are perhaps best known for creating what is their only surviving film, the silent avant garde classic from 1930, Borderline
featuring the African American
activist and entertainer Paul Robeson
in the lead role. They also published a progressive and opinionated film journal called, Close Up. The Pool Group were virtually forgotten for more than half a century after they broke up in the mid-1930s until the early 1980s when they were rediscovered by historians of twentieth century arts and cinema
, who left her a very large inheritance which would eventually go towards funding many of Pool's projects. Bryher knew from an early age that she was lesbian. In 1918 she met and became involved in a lesbian
relationship with Doolittle who was a poet. During the 1920s, Bryher was an unconventional figure in Paris
. Among her circle of friends were Ernest Hemingway
, James Joyce
, Gertrude Stein
, Sylvia Beach
and Berenice Abbott
. Her wealth enabled her to give financial support to struggling writers, including Joyce and Edith Sitwell
. She also helped with finance for the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company
(started by Sylvia Beach) and certain publishing ventures. She also helped provide funds to purchase a flat in Paris for struggling artist Baron
ess Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
.
, who encouraged her writing and, in 1913, proposed that she adopt the pseudonym H.D. as a pseudonym under which to publish her first poems in Poetry Magazine. At the same time as the problematic relationship with Pound (they were twice engaged) H.D. was carrying on a love affair with a Pennsylvania woman art student, Frances Josepha Gregg. In 1919 H.D. had a daughter, Perdita, by the Scottish composer and music critic Cecil Gray
(1895–1951). It was while she was pregnant that she formed an alliance with Bryher which was to last until H.D.’s death in 1961.
The relationship was an open
one, with both taking other partners. In 1921 Bryher entered into a marriage of convenience with the American author Robert McAlmon
, whom she divorced in 1927. In 1928, H.D. became pregnant to Kenneth Macpherson, but the pregnancy was terminated later the same year. The complexities of H.D.'s relationships led her to consult the pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis
and to develop a deep interest in psychoanalysis: in the thirties she was to be analyzed by Freud, and her interest deeply marked her poems and other writings.
and Macpherson also formally adopted H.D.'s young daughter, Perdita, whose name they officially registered as Frances Perdita Macpherson.
as regular contributors.
The first issue announced that next month’s contributors would be Osbert Sitwell
, Havelock Ellis
, André Gide
, Dorothy Richardson
and Doolittle. As symbol of the group’s aims, this was explained in their 1929 catalog of publications:
". . . The expanding ripples from a stone dropped in a pool have become more a symbol for the growth of an idea than a simple matter of hydraulics.. .As the stone will cause a spread of ripples to the water's edge, so ideas once started will go to their unknown boundary.
. . . These concentric expansions are exemplified in POOL, which is the source simply - the stone - the idea. POOL is seeking to express new trends and new will. Not, as we have said before, to grind any axe, but to make a centre for new ideas and modern thought."
(né Henry Joseph Hasslacher, 1907–1985) who had started his working life in the cutting rooms at Gaumont British. A contemporary of David Lean, at around 20, Blakeston became a protégé of Macpherson and went on to a long career as writer and critic.
. At the same time, while dismissing the greater part of British and American film-making as "trash" they also recognized Hollywood’s capacity for better things, and hailed as masterpieces films like Greed
and The Big Parade. The only extant film still available is Borderline
(1930); only fragments survive of Wing Beat (1927) and Foothills (1929). (H.D. was in all three, and Bryher was in Borderline.) 16mm fragments of Wing Beat, Foothills, and "Macpherson material," and the complete film, Borderline
, can be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art Film Study Center in New York City.
"But it was only a glimpse here and there. The Germanic thing was getting across though, curious details, watchfulness, harking on claustrophobia. We filed Germany for future reference and peeped at Vienna. Here again was tripe. Hollywood was better. Italy a shade worse. France tied up in knots on problems of continuity. While England trundled deplorably in wake, the only thing that could be said for it that it didn't seem to mind being a laughing stock. Then we began to hear from Russia. We had got very sick of Russian novels and Russian plays, and in spite of a recrudescence of Russian influence in art and decoration, there was prejudice. But Potemkin and Aelita put an end to that. Russia was getting its finger on something....Cinematography has stuck itself in front of the artist, and the artist wants to work his medium straight. His conflict is with the business manager. He also wants HIS medium straight. The thing one sees in consequence is compromise, and the beginning of a problem. As usual there are ways and means, which we will talk about later. I want first of all to cavil a bit in a general way and work in a bit of analysis and criticism."
centers on an interracial love triangle. The main narrative is concerned with racism and is illustrated without any attempt to take a moral standpoint. The film concentrated on the inner psychology of the characters, using a form of montage which had the effect of superimposition. Where the film was not banned by censorship authorities it was unenthusiastically received by the critics, and disappeared for many years. A pristine print exists however in the Cinémathèque Suisse, which has recently issued it in DVD form, together with Véronique Goel’s documentary Kenwin, about the house which Bryher
and Macpherson built at La Tour-de-Peilz.
As well as acting in this film, H.D. with Kenneth Macpherson, wrote an explanatory pamphlet to accompany it and to distribute to the audience, a piece later published in Close Up.Paul Robeson
is the only professional actor in the film and his desire to connect to a like-minded set of individuals in Europe allegedly led him to play the role of Pete for no fee.
Increasingly Pete becomes the scapegoat for the heartache and conflict that follows between Thorne and Adah. When Thorne “accidentally” murders Astrid, the “liberal” Guest House is forced by the authorities to kick Pete out: “That’s what we’re like,” admits the sympathetic Manageress resignedly. To an extent, Robeson’s character could be seen as reductionist in terms of identity as he tends to be photographed in natural surroundings: sometimes with clouds and the sea as backdrops – the location set in a Swiss Alps border town is important in this respect. Likewise Pete’s behavior is stoical even in the most threatening situations. Yet on the other hand this portrays the reality of culture in this period, and besides Pete also is the character that comes out of the situation with the most dignity even when he is asked to leave town.
, and produced Hans Richter
’s Dreams That Money Can Buy
(1944). During the Second World War, Bryher devoted her money and energies to helping refugees from Nazi Germany, and Kenwin became an important staging post on the flight.
During the 1950s, H.D. wrote a considerable amount of poetry, most notably Helen in Egypt (written between 1952–54), a feminist deconstruction of epic poetry which uses Euripides's play Helen as a starting point for a reinterpretation of the basis of the Trojan War and, by extension, of war itself. Bryher’s friendship with H.D. lasted to the end of their lives. H.D. spent her last years of failing health in a Swiss clinic. She died on September 27, 1961, in Zürich. Her daughter Perdita moved to the United States where she raised a family, all of whom became writers. Perdita died in 2001.
Kenneth Macpherson
Kenneth Macpherson was born in Scotland, 27 March 1902, the son of Scottish painter, John 'Pop' Macpherson and Clara Macpherson. Descended from 6 generations of artists, Macpherson was a novelist, photographer, critic and film-maker...
and Bryher
Bryher
Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...
(Annie Winifred Ellerman). Their work has been studied by poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and film historians as well as by scholars of mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and LGBT history. They are perhaps best known for creating what is their only surviving film, the silent avant garde classic from 1930, Borderline
Borderline (1930 film)
Borderline is a 1930 film, written and directed by Kenneth Macpherson and produced by the Pool Group in Territet, Switzerland. The silent film, with English inter-titles, is primarily noted for its handling of the contentious issue of inter-racial relationships, using avant-garde experimental...
featuring the African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
activist and entertainer Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
in the lead role. They also published a progressive and opinionated film journal called, Close Up. The Pool Group were virtually forgotten for more than half a century after they broke up in the mid-1930s until the early 1980s when they were rediscovered by historians of twentieth century arts and cinema
Members and formation
The Pool Group was launched in 1927, from Riant Chateau, Territet, Switzerland and consisted of Bryher, Kenneth Macpherson and Hilda Doolittle (better known by her initials, H.D.). Macpherson designed the Pool Group’s logo, which served as the cover of its catalog, showing concentric ripples in water.Bryher
Bryher's father was the shipowner and financier John EllermanJohn Ellerman
Sir John Reeves Ellerman, 1st Baronet, CH was an English shipowner and investor. He was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in modern British history, and the only Briton of his generation whose wealth rivalled the leading plutocrats of America's gilded age...
, who left her a very large inheritance which would eventually go towards funding many of Pool's projects. Bryher knew from an early age that she was lesbian. In 1918 she met and became involved in a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
relationship with Doolittle who was a poet. During the 1920s, Bryher was an unconventional figure in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Among her circle of friends were Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach , born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.-Early life:...
and Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott
Berenice Abbott , born Bernice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930s.-Youth:...
. Her wealth enabled her to give financial support to struggling writers, including Joyce and Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE was a British poet and critic.-Background:Edith Sitwell was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the oldest child and only daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, of Renishaw Hall; he was an expert on genealogy and landscaping...
. She also helped with finance for the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company (bookshop)
Shakespeare and Company is the name of two independent bookstores on Paris' Left Bank. The first was opened by Sylvia Beach on 17 November 1919 at 8 rue Dupuytren before moving to larger premises at 12 rue de l'Odéon in the 6th arrondissement in 1922. During the 1920s, it was a gathering place for...
(started by Sylvia Beach) and certain publishing ventures. She also helped provide funds to purchase a flat in Paris for struggling artist Baron
Baron
Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...
ess Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was a German-born avant-garde, Dadaist artist and poet who worked for several years in Greenwich Village, New York City, United States.-Early life:Freytag-Loringhoven was born Elsa Hildegard Plötz in Swinemünde , German Empire,...
.
H.D.
H.D. (1886–1961) was born Hilda Doolittle in Pennsylvania, the daughter of a professor of astronomy and a musically-inclined mother. While still a school-girl she met Ezra PoundEzra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, who encouraged her writing and, in 1913, proposed that she adopt the pseudonym H.D. as a pseudonym under which to publish her first poems in Poetry Magazine. At the same time as the problematic relationship with Pound (they were twice engaged) H.D. was carrying on a love affair with a Pennsylvania woman art student, Frances Josepha Gregg. In 1919 H.D. had a daughter, Perdita, by the Scottish composer and music critic Cecil Gray
Cecil Gray
Cecil Gray was a Scottish music critic and composer. He published books on the composers Jean Sibelius, Peter Warlock and Carlo Gesualdo, the last of these co-authored by the same Warlock; also a history of music, collections of essays on music, a play about Gilles de Rais and an autobiography.He...
(1895–1951). It was while she was pregnant that she formed an alliance with Bryher which was to last until H.D.’s death in 1961.
The relationship was an open
Open relationship
An open relationship is an interpersonal relationship in which the parties want to be together but agree to a form of a non-monogamous relationship. This means that they agree that a romantic or sexual relationship with another person is accepted, permitted, or tolerated...
one, with both taking other partners. In 1921 Bryher entered into a marriage of convenience with the American author Robert McAlmon
Robert McAlmon
Robert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.-Life:McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of ten children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister....
, whom she divorced in 1927. In 1928, H.D. became pregnant to Kenneth Macpherson, but the pregnancy was terminated later the same year. The complexities of H.D.'s relationships led her to consult the pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...
and to develop a deep interest in psychoanalysis: in the thirties she was to be analyzed by Freud, and her interest deeply marked her poems and other writings.
Kenneth Macpherson
In 1927, Bryher married Kenneth Macpherson, a writer who shared her interest in film and who was at the same time H.D.'s lover. Macpherson, was a young Scottish painter with a passion for film. H.D. seems to have fallen in love with him though Macpherson was evidently exclusively homosexual. In Burier, Switzerland, overlooking Lake Geneva, the couple, along with Doolittle, built a Bauhaus-style structure that doubled as a home and film studio, which they named Kenwin. BryherBryher
Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...
and Macpherson also formally adopted H.D.'s young daughter, Perdita, whose name they officially registered as Frances Perdita Macpherson.
Close Up
Close Up was the Pool Group's main literary output, in the form of a monthly journal. The first issue of Close Up appeared in July 1927, with Macpherson as editor, Bryher as assistant editor, and H.D. and Oswell BlakestonOswell Blakeston
Oswell Blakeston was the pseudonym of Henry Joseph Hasslacher , a British writer and artist who also worked in the film industry, made some experimental films, and wrote extensively on film theory...
as regular contributors.
The first issue announced that next month’s contributors would be Osbert Sitwell
Osbert Sitwell
Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet, was an English writer. His elder sister was Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell and his younger brother was Sir Sacheverell Sitwell; like them he devoted his life to art and literature....
, Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...
, André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Dorothy Richardson
Dorothy Richardson
Dorothy Miller Richardson was a British author and journalist.-Biography:Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883...
and Doolittle. As symbol of the group’s aims, this was explained in their 1929 catalog of publications:
". . . The expanding ripples from a stone dropped in a pool have become more a symbol for the growth of an idea than a simple matter of hydraulics.. .As the stone will cause a spread of ripples to the water's edge, so ideas once started will go to their unknown boundary.
. . . These concentric expansions are exemplified in POOL, which is the source simply - the stone - the idea. POOL is seeking to express new trends and new will. Not, as we have said before, to grind any axe, but to make a centre for new ideas and modern thought."
Publications
Other publications included books on film to novels and a German-teaching text by Bryher and Trude Weiss called “The Light-hearted Student”, exemplifying Bryher’s idiosyncratic teaching methods. The Pool-books were: Kenneth MacPherson, Pool Reflection (spring 1927); F. L. Black, the pseudonym of Bryher's younger brother John Ellerman Jr.: Why Do They Like It?, with a foreword by Dorothy Richardson (spring 1927), on British public schools; Bryher: Civilians (fall 1927), on World War I; MacPherson's novel Gaunt Island (fall 1927); Oswell Blakeston: Through a Yellow Glass (1928), a complete guide to the cinema Studio; Eric Elliot: Anatomy of a Motion Picture Art (1929), history of cinematography; Bryher: Film Problems of Soviet Russia; Oswald Blakestone's novel: Extra Passenger (1930); Hanns Sachs: Does Capital Punishment Exist? (a pamphlet). Bryher's analyst from 1928 to 1932, Hanns Sachs (1881-1947) was one of the seven members of Freud's inner circle.Oswell Blakeston
Most of the books were by the members of the group which had been expanded by the addition of Oswell BlakestonOswell Blakeston
Oswell Blakeston was the pseudonym of Henry Joseph Hasslacher , a British writer and artist who also worked in the film industry, made some experimental films, and wrote extensively on film theory...
(né Henry Joseph Hasslacher, 1907–1985) who had started his working life in the cutting rooms at Gaumont British. A contemporary of David Lean, at around 20, Blakeston became a protégé of Macpherson and went on to a long career as writer and critic.
POOL film-making
Pool heartily approved much avant-garde work, and had an early enthusiasm for independent and private film-making. Their principal loyalties however were to German cinema, and particularly G.W. Pabst, and to Soviet cinema, outstandingly EisensteinSergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
. At the same time, while dismissing the greater part of British and American film-making as "trash" they also recognized Hollywood’s capacity for better things, and hailed as masterpieces films like Greed
Greed (film)
Greed is a 1924 American dramatic silent film. It was directed by Erich von Stroheim and starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Tempe Pigott, Sylvia Ashton, Chester Conklin, Joan Standing and Jack Curtis....
and The Big Parade. The only extant film still available is Borderline
Borderline (1930 film)
Borderline is a 1930 film, written and directed by Kenneth Macpherson and produced by the Pool Group in Territet, Switzerland. The silent film, with English inter-titles, is primarily noted for its handling of the contentious issue of inter-racial relationships, using avant-garde experimental...
(1930); only fragments survive of Wing Beat (1927) and Foothills (1929). (H.D. was in all three, and Bryher was in Borderline.) 16mm fragments of Wing Beat, Foothills, and "Macpherson material," and the complete film, Borderline
Borderline (1930 film)
Borderline is a 1930 film, written and directed by Kenneth Macpherson and produced by the Pool Group in Territet, Switzerland. The silent film, with English inter-titles, is primarily noted for its handling of the contentious issue of inter-racial relationships, using avant-garde experimental...
, can be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art Film Study Center in New York City.
Opinions on contemporary cinema
Kenneth Macpherson wrote of his views on world cinema in an editorial from the first issue of Close Up that encompassed many of the Pool Group's views,"But it was only a glimpse here and there. The Germanic thing was getting across though, curious details, watchfulness, harking on claustrophobia. We filed Germany for future reference and peeped at Vienna. Here again was tripe. Hollywood was better. Italy a shade worse. France tied up in knots on problems of continuity. While England trundled deplorably in wake, the only thing that could be said for it that it didn't seem to mind being a laughing stock. Then we began to hear from Russia. We had got very sick of Russian novels and Russian plays, and in spite of a recrudescence of Russian influence in art and decoration, there was prejudice. But Potemkin and Aelita put an end to that. Russia was getting its finger on something....Cinematography has stuck itself in front of the artist, and the artist wants to work his medium straight. His conflict is with the business manager. He also wants HIS medium straight. The thing one sees in consequence is compromise, and the beginning of a problem. As usual there are ways and means, which we will talk about later. I want first of all to cavil a bit in a general way and work in a bit of analysis and criticism."
Borderline
The film BorderlineBorderline (1930 film)
Borderline is a 1930 film, written and directed by Kenneth Macpherson and produced by the Pool Group in Territet, Switzerland. The silent film, with English inter-titles, is primarily noted for its handling of the contentious issue of inter-racial relationships, using avant-garde experimental...
centers on an interracial love triangle. The main narrative is concerned with racism and is illustrated without any attempt to take a moral standpoint. The film concentrated on the inner psychology of the characters, using a form of montage which had the effect of superimposition. Where the film was not banned by censorship authorities it was unenthusiastically received by the critics, and disappeared for many years. A pristine print exists however in the Cinémathèque Suisse, which has recently issued it in DVD form, together with Véronique Goel’s documentary Kenwin, about the house which Bryher
Bryher
Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...
and Macpherson built at La Tour-de-Peilz.
As well as acting in this film, H.D. with Kenneth Macpherson, wrote an explanatory pamphlet to accompany it and to distribute to the audience, a piece later published in Close Up.Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
is the only professional actor in the film and his desire to connect to a like-minded set of individuals in Europe allegedly led him to play the role of Pete for no fee.
Borderline plot and analysis
The story revolves around a guesthouse run by a set of liberal, hedonistic young people sympathetic to the emerging black American culture. In what would have been completely frowned upon at the time, the manageress played by Bryher has given a room to Pete (Paul Robeson) and his light-skinned black wife Adah, played by Robeson’s real wife at the time Eslanda Robeson. Adah though is having an affair with a white man Thorne (Gavin Arthur), who is also involved with Astrid (played by the poet Hilda Doolittle aka HD). When Adah leaves Thorne to be with her husband Pete, Thorne is distraught and race becomes an issue.Increasingly Pete becomes the scapegoat for the heartache and conflict that follows between Thorne and Adah. When Thorne “accidentally” murders Astrid, the “liberal” Guest House is forced by the authorities to kick Pete out: “That’s what we’re like,” admits the sympathetic Manageress resignedly. To an extent, Robeson’s character could be seen as reductionist in terms of identity as he tends to be photographed in natural surroundings: sometimes with clouds and the sea as backdrops – the location set in a Swiss Alps border town is important in this respect. Likewise Pete’s behavior is stoical even in the most threatening situations. Yet on the other hand this portrays the reality of culture in this period, and besides Pete also is the character that comes out of the situation with the most dignity even when he is asked to leave town.
Disbandment of POOL and legacy
Close Up ceased publication in 1933, and Macpherson departed from the group. In the United States during 1940s, he lived with Peggy GuggenheimPeggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
, and produced Hans Richter
Hans Richter
Hans Richter may refer to:*Hans Richter , Austrian conductor*Hans Richter , designer of the Volksbühne in Berlin and villa Heller in Ústí nad Labem...
’s Dreams That Money Can Buy
Dreams That Money Can Buy
Dreams That Money Can Buy is a 1947 American experimental feature color film written, produced, and directed by surrealist artist and dada film-theorist Hans Richter.The film was produced by Kenneth Macpherson and Peggy Guggenheim....
(1944). During the Second World War, Bryher devoted her money and energies to helping refugees from Nazi Germany, and Kenwin became an important staging post on the flight.
During the 1950s, H.D. wrote a considerable amount of poetry, most notably Helen in Egypt (written between 1952–54), a feminist deconstruction of epic poetry which uses Euripides's play Helen as a starting point for a reinterpretation of the basis of the Trojan War and, by extension, of war itself. Bryher’s friendship with H.D. lasted to the end of their lives. H.D. spent her last years of failing health in a Swiss clinic. She died on September 27, 1961, in Zürich. Her daughter Perdita moved to the United States where she raised a family, all of whom became writers. Perdita died in 2001.