Lady Filmer in her Drawing Room

In Victorian England, aristocratic women produced new meanings for photographs by cutting them up and pasting them into elaborate watercolor scenes. Lady Filmer employed photocollage to bolster her position in society. Here she placed herself at the heart of a gathering of fashionably attired friends and family, making a photocollage album—that is, performing the very activity that produced this work. The composition revolves around Filmer’s most important guest: Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, with whom she certainly flirted and may even have had an affair. The prince is shown leaning against the table, his hat at a rakish angle and waistline trimmed flatteringly by Lady Filmer’s knife. By contrast, her husband, Sir Edmund Filmer, is shown in the lower right—near the family dog.