Roger Parry learned photography from the Surrealist fashion photographer Maurice Tabard, becoming his darkroom assistant and, like his mentor, experimenting with avant-garde printing techniques. When Parry made this portrait of the noted French actress Danielle Darrieux, she had featured in several films and was well on her way to stardom. In contrast to the typical pinup, however, the photographer rendered the familiar strange by employing solarization, a process in which exposing the negative or print to light during development reverses tones and produces a dark outline.
