Portraits for Coca-Cola

More than a century ago, my great-great-uncle, Hamilton King, a prominent American magazine and advertising illustrator who was known for his paintings of pretty girls, was commissioned by Coca-Cola to produce something special for them. His Coca-Cola girls – the first in 1909 and another in 1913 – have since become iconic, those elegant faces, framed by broad Edwardian hats, you see on those highly collectible serving trays. Although Uncle Hamilton died before I was born, my mother had been something of a favourite of his and I so grew up hearing stories about him and what’s more in an old New England farmhouse where some of his paintings graced the walls – including quite a remarkable one he’d painted of his younger sister, Millie, my great-grandmother, as a beautiful young woman reclining on a chaise lounge and in a dress that would have been quite daring for the time.

I was familiar with his work for Coca-Cola and when I was approached by them  to shoot some portraits of women in Africa in support of a program they had set up to help disenfranchised women form their own businesses, I was delighted at this opportunity to touch base with this bit of family history, a sort of sequel to my great-great-uncle Hamilton’s famous Coca-Cola girls.