12 Photographs, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Ady Fidelin, the first black model and muse, by Man Ray, Pablo Picasso and Lee Miller, with Footnotes. #171
Mar 3, 2023
Ady Fidelin, c. 1936
Silver print
23 x 17.5 cm.
Private collection
Ady Fidelin was born in 1915 in Pointe-à-Pitre into one of Guadeloupe’s oldest Creole families, immigrating to France in the wake of the catastrophic 1928 cyclone that devastated the Caribbean, killing thousands. The death of her mother during this traumatic event and the passing of her father a few years later precipitated her migration to Paris to join family members who had made the passage before her. She arrived in France in one of the successive waves of émigres from the island, lured by the hope of a better life in the storm’s aftermath…