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"Ayesha wears a turban over her woollen pate. A coal black negress from Martinique, she sits for the artists, and stoutly maintains that she is an American. She carries an imitation gold card-case and all her cards are magnificently scalloped with gilt edges and painted with forget-me-nots. They are engraved with one word, 'Ayesha'."
Marjorie Howard, Vanity Fair, 1914

"If Aïcha is often naked, she rarely undoes her head kerchief—now cabbage-green, now the colour of silver—which suits her so well. Aïcha is too much a girl from Roubaix not to be perfectly civilised. She sits, she dances, she is pleasant. Long before Josephine Baker launched the fashion of banana belts, Aïcha wore, at wild parties in Montparnasse, her diminutive raffia skirt."
André Salmon, 1929.

This extremely rare photographic print by the iconic artist Man Ray is a striking profile portrait of one of the most celebrated Black female figures of the early 20th century; Aïcha Goblet, a woman who came to embody the spirit of Paris during the Roaring Twenties. At that time, the City was the global epicentre of artistic experimentation, intellectual exchange, and the burgeoning culture of modern celebrity. This era marked a fascinating intersection between celebrity and identity, as new forms of public recognition and fame were shaped by the evolving cultural and social dynamics. This exquisite image stands testament to that fascinating period.

Madeleine Julie Goblet, born to a Martinican father and a French mother, became a symbol of the complex expressions of identity and diversity related to skin colour, and attitudes toward women in early 20th century Paris. Though she is less well remembered today than contemporaries like Kiki de Montparnasse or Josephine Baker, she paved the way for them, as the first black female celebrity in France of modern times. Adopting the name Aïcha, she sometimes styled herself as a princess and wore a turban, which added to her enigmatic persona. Her captivating presence inspired the character Cora in André Salmon’s novel La Négresse du Sacré-Coeur (1920), and she appeared in several films. In Eugène Deslaw's Montparnasse, poème du café-crème (1929), she starred alongside Foujita and Luis Buñuel. She is also believed to be one of the two Black women dancing in plant-fibre loincloths and bare-chested in Le Bal de la horde (anonymous documentary, 1926), amidst a parade of artists in blackface, reflecting the era's complex and often problematic engagement with race and identity.

Aïcha was not only an actress and music-hall performer but also a model. She first posed for the artist Jules Pascin, who became her friend, and later for artists such as Moïse Kisling, Henri Matisse, Kees Van Dongen, and Félix Vallotton. Vallotton’s iconic painting of her captures her standing majestically, embodying both classical and modern styles, with bare shoulders, joined hands, and the same signature Paul Poiret turban she wears in the present photograph.

Man Ray began experimenting with photography in 1915, and by the time he arrived in Paris in 1921, he was short of cash and started photographing other artists’ works to make a living. He soon transitioned to portrait photography, setting up his own studio by December 1921. Six months later, around the time this photograph was taken, he had just begun renting a studio on Campagne-Première. Man Ray, as seen in the present photograph, often reframed the image on the contact sheet, retouched it in the negative, and then enlarged it during printing, achieving a slightly out-of-focus effect and a softness to his images. His skill as a photographer, evident in this beguiling profile, made him the most sought-after fashion and portrait photographer in Paris, with over half of his artistic output eventually being in this field.

Writing in 2020 on Man Ray's lover the Guadeloupean dancer and model Adrienne Fidelin (1915-2004) Wendy. A. Grossman wrote, "Accounts of black personalities long lost to narratives of modernism are belatedly finding their way into the historical record, precipitated by the recent advent of scholarship and exhibitions dedicated to this recovery process. As a result, black artists, models, and performers who previously attracted little critical attention are slowly emerging from obscurity to command consideration in their own right." Now, hopefully, with the emergence of this important and rare photograph, more can be done to highlight the figure of Aïcha too.