Musical accompaniment: After You’ve Gone by the great Bessie Smith. She had power in her voice.
I came across this Frank Eugene picture called Ritual Vestalis and I immediately recognized it… or I thought I did. But it’s just a very similar picture of the same four women, also by Frank Eugene, and probably taken on the same day. It’s a lovely picture by itself, but it’s also interesting to compare them.
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old spirituals 
The photo is eye catching and reflects youthful innocence.
Each women has her hands in a different position that appears to be symbolic of something.
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Your comment made me curious. The Latin word Vestalis means “of or pertaining to Vesta”, referring to the Roman goddess of the hearth, home, and family. So perhaps the motions are related to things you do at home…?
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there is meaning in this picture if only we could interpret it
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Could the position of their hands be the equivalent of the pictorial maxim of the 3 monkeys, each with their hands over one of the 3 sense of hearing, seeing and speaking. There is a 4th Monkey sometimes for “do no evil.”
Curiosity got the better of me; I had to take a few minutes to see other photos by Frank Eugene and learn about him. He was an American of German decent. He studied at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and became a painter and photographer. He spent most of his life living in Germany, even renouncing his American citizenship. Painting became a thing he gave up to dedicate his life to photography. Eugene spent his later years as a teacher of photography. I recommend a perusal of his work. He was very avant-garde for the time.
Eugene captured the 4 sisters in various poses. One photo has writing at the bottom that may be the names of the young woman. It’s the photo Kimberly linked to this post.
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That’s very interesting! I wonder if Germany was a country that didn’t offer dual citizenship. So if he wanted to live there, he had to renounce his American citizenship. Or if there was some other reason? Fascinating stuff!
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You and other readers often see things in the pictures I don’t notice until you point them out!
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