Reflections in a Golden Eye: Exploring the photographic art of Margaret Nolan and Shirley Eaton

Williams, Melanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3609-207X (2024) Reflections in a Golden Eye: Exploring the photographic art of Margaret Nolan and Shirley Eaton. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 21 (4). pp. 513-535. ISSN 1743-4521

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Abstract

This article offers a new perspective on the much-discussed phenomenon of the ‘Bond girl’ through an exploration of photographic artwork produced in later life by two notable Bond girls: the two ‘golden girls’ of Goldfinger (1964), Margaret Nolan, who appeared in the film’s credit sequence, and Shirley Eaton, who played the character who suffers skin suffocation by being painted gold. It is a remarkable coincidence that both women turned to photographic artwork as a way of reflecting back on their careers and on their youthful positioning as sex symbols, exemplified by their highly publicised appearances in Goldfinger. This article places their 1960s iconicity into dialogue with their retrospective, reflective artwork which is by turns critical, celebratory and ambivalent about their past lives as Bond girls. Nolan’s feminist-inflected photo-collages render her previous glamorous image uncanny through unsettling and subversive juxtapositions whereas Eaton’s digital remixing of old images alongside contemporary self-portraiture occupy the territory of star glamour more comfortably but extend it by showing the golden girl as older woman. Nolan and Eaton’s artwork provides valuable insights into the experiential dimensions of having been a Bond girl, with their creative response through art presenting certain complexities and nuances that written or spoken accounts might not access in quite the same way. In that respect, this article, alongside its specific insights into Bond girls, demonstrates the value for researchers in engaging with such material.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	bond girls,goldfinger,james bond,margaret nolan,shirley eaton,glamour,photo-collage,photographic self-portraiture,stardom,women artists,communication,visual arts and performing arts ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3315
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies (former - to 2024)
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > British Cinema & Television
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	26 Jun 2024 10:31
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2024 09:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/95686
DOI:	10.3366/jbctv.2024.0741

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