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Henry Lamb RA (1883-1960) P E O P L E 64
A N D 65
P O R T R A I T S
I M A G E
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I M A G E “
Great portrait photographers are great mythologists
“
Roland Barthes Camera Lucida, 1980
R E F L E C T I O N S O N C O N T E M P O R A R Y C U LT U R E T H R O U G H P H O T O G R A P H Y
Saturday 15 September - Sunday 21 October 2018 FILM WEEKEND 22 - 23 September I PROCESS WEEKEND 5 - 7 October Cover
Charlie Wheeler
What’s the Time Mr Wolf? 2015
Norman Parkinson
Ian Fleming at Home, 1964
Digital print
Vintage silver print
35.4 x 25.4cm
50.8 x 40.6cm 66
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In scope and scale IMAGE is an ambitious and exhilarating exhibition, combining historically significant twentieth-century figures such as Andy Warhol and Peter Beard with the contemporary photography of five remarkable photographers, who are all female. The themes of portraiture, fashion, celebrity and humour tether the curatorial narrative from the past to the present and broadly anticipate a shift in perspective and awareness from the viewed to the viewer in the work of the younger artists. My own curiosity in photography was sparked by the work of ground-breaking American artist Nan Goldin and by the confrontational Japanese pioneer photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, as well as a series of large-format polaroids by another American, Neal Slavin, who I am especially delighted to welcome to Messums Wiltshire. I suppose my attraction – ill thought out as it was at that time – was towards the ‘original’, but, as this show so brilliantly illustrates, that point is open to critique as the reproduction of images and digital manipulation itself feeds photography as an art form. It is an area which would benefit from greater clarity generally in order to be better enjoyed, and for that reason, the exhibition contains a weekend focusing on the process of photography, to explore and explain some of the techniques and thinking. As an artform it offers a lifetime of pleasure for those interested in engaging. Thanks go to the Angela Williams Archive, James Hyman Gallery, Michael Hoppen Gallery and TJ Boulting. Also to Audra Allen, Andrew Ginger and James Birch and all the artists. Finally, I would like to thank our team of curators Laura Grace Simpkins and Catherine Milner – it really is their show. Johnny Messum
Mick Rock Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger, Windows on the World, New York City, 1977 Limited edition print, signed 41 x 50.8cm (detail)
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C E L E B R IT Y, VAN IT Y, M YT HO LO G Y: A FO RECA S T FO R P HO TO G RA P HY An introductory essay by Laura Grace Simpkins, Assistant Curator
PHOTOGRAPHY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PROCESS defined by its fluctuations, possibly more so than any other means of artistic expression. In little over 150 years photography has journeyed from nineteenth-century calotypes and ferrotypes to twenty-first century digital DSLR cameras and has recently embraced our mobile phones. In doing so, photography has gone from being in the palm of the expert to the hands of the masses. Peering at the viewer through a slatted venetian blind, Ian Fleming (cover) taken by renowned fashion photographer Norman Parkinson in 1964, concisely encapsulates the main theme of this exhibition, that of observation. It is becoming increasingly clear that who we look at and how we look at them changes with time, as much as the medium in question. This image of the James Bond writer plays with the viewer’s perceived accessibility of a celebrated individual. Compared to the progressive sophistication of cameras today, and their proliferation in our lives, this portrait marks perhaps the watershed moment before the nature of photography became more invasive, penetrating and unforgiving. Parkinson’s work pre-empts the proverbial explosion of fashion and celebrity photography in the twentieth-century, surely correspondent with the rise in consumerism and advertising in the postwar years. It is my contention that a cultural interest in acquiring things anticipated a collective interest in the objectification of the public individual, and by extension, their lives. Such a postulation is articulated by today’s obsession with social media and reality television, phenomena explored through the lens of five contemporary photographers in the barn. Figures at the centre of media interest have always enjoyed a cult status throughout the years, but with the appetite for the commodification of a life, the desire to survey and stalk those in the public eye developed from the 60s onwards. With few laws to hinder the paparazzi, the existence of the private space was relegated to a place in the past. From Mick Rock’s explosive 70s rock n’ roll photography we notice how public figures – including David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Lou Reed – attempted to control and ultimately deflect constant surveillance via the twofold mechanism of humour and theatricality. The image of writer Truman Capote and artist Andy Warhol is a good example of what I am terming ‘belied extraversion’. On a bright, green-screen background, Warhol in a Santa costume grasps a large, pink lollipop whilst being hugged by a bedenimed Capote. An anonymous hand holding the lens of a camera protrudes in from the left, informing us that this is a photograph of someone photographing. We, the viewers, are doubly removed, essentially voyeurs. Bizarrely Warhol’s pout and Capote’s attempt at a sultry expression uncannily predict the ‘duck-face’ trend now awash Mick Rock Truman Capote and Andy Warhol, New York City, 1979 Limited edition print, signed 50.8 x 41cm 4
twenty-first century social media. There is an apt sense of the ridiculous here however; the pair, refreshingly, are not taking themselves at all seriously. Warhol, in his collaboration with fellow American artist Peter Beard, offers a window onto the other side of the spotlight. They take cosy instant polaroid portraits of each other with their canine friend, a 5
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golden Labrador. Again, Warhol looks faintly ridiculous, sticking out his tongue and hugging the dog close. Man and beast resemble each other, with their blonde hair and pasty complexions. When the public acclimatised to, and became weary of, images of celebrities, photographers turned to making the mundane intriguing. The large-format polaroids of Neal Slavin, a world respected photographer and film director, demonstrate that you do not have to capture a famous face to make a glamorous picture. Instead Slavin uses humorous group stagings to satisfy the viewer’s socialised taste for the theatrical. Slavin’s work is slightly unusual in its placement within the Long Gallery, surrounded as it is by singular portraits of highly recognised individuals, including additional photographs by Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean, Ray Bellisario, Lewis Morley, Daniel Farson, Angela Williams, Nancy Bundt and Charlie Wheeler. Britons, a series commissioned by the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television and published in 1986, encourages viewing collections of people – artists, lifeguards and nuns – as representative of one identity. Slavin’s image of Stonehenge is pertinent to our proximity to this world-famous monument. Through his strategic design of thirteen security team members, Slavin is able to explore the paradox of taking ‘iconic’ images of anonymous people. Through the meteorological drama; Caravaggio-esque, chiaroscuro light; tone and the aforementioned experimental composition, Slavin has created some of the most ambitious and thought-provoking works in the Long Gallery, without us knowing, or indeed caring about, any of the subjects. Now we journey from some of the most famous faces of the twentieth-century in the Long Gallery to the barn – where technological advances such as the image sharing app Instagram have revolutionised the distribution of fine art photography and should be credited with the engendering of a new and improved photographic aesthetic. According to Instagram’s website it has a community of more than 800 million users who ‘share the world’s moments’ on the service. Whatever your opinion of Instagram, or, indeed, if your mind is still to be made up, it must be said that within this visual social nexus young photographers are able to subvert constraints of sex, race and class. In September 2017, for example, photographers took to this platform in particular to protest the Nikon D850 PR campaign, as the company had chosen 32 photographic ‘ambassadors’ to advertise their new camera without selecting a single woman – in what can be described, at best, as a rather painful oversight. Although seemingly tangential to our discussion, social media permits different voices to be heard and different work to be viewed and, thus, different subjects to be seen. According to one major survey, women only contribute to 25% of all exhibitions at London’s major art institutions. Yet Neal Slavin
Custodial Staff
represented on their site are women, with women selling 40% more work than men.
Stonehenge,
On social media, young artists, especially young women artists, can very literally represent themselves
Wiltshire, 1983 Archival print 61 x 50.8cm (detail) 6
a report by online art market ArtFinder found that without traditional gatekeepers, 50% of artists
in their own free, digital galleries. Rather experimentally, the five photographers in the barn – Juno Calypso, Maisie Cousins, Anna Fox (in collaboration with singer Alison Goldfrapp), Polly Penrose and Natalie Krick – were discovered via Instagram accounts, posts or hashtags. 7
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These photographers use Instagram to share, exhibit and stimulate dialogue around their work, whilst returning to the notion of the ‘new aesthetic’: questioning what it means to make and show work in this era of self-obsession. With the incessant use of technology documenting every moment, (from Facebook to Snapchat to Twitter) the narcissism saturating each generation has been called into moral and social – but also artistic – interrogation. Pre the advent of photography, you had to be an artist, or, at least, of an artistic disposition, in order to create a self-portrait. Now this is far from the case. Phones with a front-facing, ‘selfie’ camera are equally as ubiquitous as mirrors. Many utilise their phone camera instead of a mirror, preferring the more flattering, softer and often ‘filtered’ outcome. Yet front-facing camera phones – the first an Ericsson Z1010 introduced in 2003 – were intended to augment video conferencing – certainly not for vanity. The trope of vanity has been an attribute specifically reserved for the female sex. The vain woman, as depicted by male artists throughout the centuries, was contested at length in the late John Berger’s ground-breaking Ways of Seeing (1972). Observing Velasquez’s The Rokeby Venus (famously vandalised by Canadian suffragette Mary Richardson in 1915), he passionately ‘calls out’ painting’s scopophilic double standard: You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity’ thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure. Maisie Cousins (66k followers) and her image grass bum reacts against the quixotic notion of flawless art-historical females such as The Rokeby Venus and the chaste ‘poreless’ Tuccia – a virgin of ancient Rome. Cousins has shown that social media is a positive means of expanding her audience whilst simultaneously pushing her radical, reactionary work towards those who want and need it. Whereas before artists showed us the fantasies we were desperate to see visualised, Cousins’ camera is employed to highlight the apparent perfection that techniques such as oil painting, egg tempera and Photoshop have offered us. To this end, Cousins states that ‘Nature is always beautiful and disgusting. Even the most beautiful people leak, bleed and shit’. grass bum, a confrontational image, largely due to its monumental scale – comparable to those life-sized nudes so deplored by Berger – is the epitome of such a statement. In this photograph, a macro composition of a left buttock being gripped by its owner, Cousins treats the subject’s body akin to an object. Abstracted in such a way, it almost resembles raw chicken, seasoned with rosemary. At the top-right of the image the viewer can discern a foil background. Cousins’ photographs gift us with ultimate objectification, a controlled surface of another human’s body. grass bum, like many of her other works in the show (including finger and slug), gives us something back – a visceral, corporeal slap in the face, whether we want it or not. Maisie Cousins
grass bum, 2015 Archival Giclée print 250 x 166cm
On a slightly different note, Cousins has discussed the guilt of not shooting on film and that ‘proper’ photographers are expected to shun the apparent ease of digital photography. Such an admission of guilt begs the question of why we hold certain media in veneration. Perhaps anxiety stems from the idea that skill and craftsmanship (once defined by Norman Parkinson, who refused to call himself anything but a craftsman), are fading away.
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The skill of the modern photograph lies behind the camera and after an image has been taken, demanding an enquiry into what a finished photograph actually is, and what it looks like. All adjustments can occur in post-production, with photographers no longer needing to manually learn about aperture, shutter-speed or white balancing. Even composition can be cropped into place on a computer. The laptop has become the new darkroom. Juno Calypso (100k followers) pivots the camera back onto herself. Making her work alone, she is both subject and object. Calypso ruminates on her modernised medium constantly, observing that: ‘My generation came of age at the same time as digital photography, the internet and the selfie. It was an awkward time to be alive’. Through her work Calypso has transformed the selfie into something beautiful and worthy of esoteric contemplation – effectively artistically gentrifying this now everyday mode of self-representation. Unlike Cousins, Calypso’s intention is not to react against or indeed expose the trope of female vanity but, instead, to revel in those qualities, ‘Anything that people consider tacky, low-brow, or that makes people say, “women are so stupid for liking this” – that’s exactly the stuff I want more of’. In Popcorn Venus Calypso depicts herself emerging out of a large, two-tiered cake, reminiscent of Debbie Reynolds in the famous Singing in the Rain scene (1952). Just like Reynolds, Calypso is playing a part here, this time as ‘Joyce’, her rather depressed, 50s housewife alter ego. Calypso’s, or, perhaps, Joyce’s, expression is one of intense boredom, despite the oddity of her culinary surroundings. Food is, of course, also prevalent throughout Cousins’ work – both artists use produce as visual shorthand for gluttony, consumption and covetousness. The title of this photograph shares the name of a book by Marjorie Rosen: Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies & the American Dream. In the preface Rosen writes: ‘Cinema Woman is a Popcorn Venus, a delectable but insubstantial hybrid of cultural distortions’. Like this folkloric hybrid, the photographed or Cinematic Woman is a mythological construction, as fictitious as the Roman goddess of love. How suitable then is reading this image, with its constructed, two-dimensional heroine and baby-pink clam shell backdrop, as redolent of The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. This painting, completed in 1486, is another of ‘those’ female nudes, with the viewer’s unabashed gaze supposedly justified by the scholarly Renaissance interests in humanism, mythology and religion. In her staging of a twenty-first century myth Calypso is dramatic, both mirroring and probing Botticelli’s female ideal. Attention to detail is paramount: her golden wig is draped to the same side as Venus’ flowing mane and the linear folds of the rose-pink table cloth are similar to the markings on the shell Venus floats weightlessly upon. Calypso offers the viewer a subversive interpretation of Cinema Woman in the centre of attention: a reading which is decidedly ambivalent, retaining a trite sense of humour and in a powerful gesture demonstrates that voyeurism is an experience best felt, when we are caught looking by art looking Juno Calypso
Popcorn Venus, 2015 Archival Giclée print
right back at us. This radical suggestion was originally put forward by Laura Mulvey, in her seminal essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), and moreover persuades the viewer to reflect upon how observation changes with time:
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Hence the spectator, lulled into a false sense of security by the apparent legality of his surrogate, sees through his look and finds himself exposed as complicit, caught in the moral ambiguity of looking. Though this introduction has steadfastly argued in favour of Instagram as the new frontier for fine art photography, it is imperative to note that the next photographic turning point – perhaps the most significant to date – has been reached. Instagram’s many detractors have suggested that social media can ruin our experiences: not only of art, but of travel, food, relationships and even of life itself. In 2017 a large survey published by the Royal Society for Public Health and the Young Health Movement ranked Instagram the worst platform for young people’s mental wellbeing. The very same report described social media as being more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. ‘Everything in moderation’ has never felt more appropriate. Contemporary photographic trends further the legacy set out by Roland Barthes in his remarkable Camera Lucida (1980), that great portraitists are excellent story-tellers. With the invention of social media, it is possible for us to curate our own, self-centred stories by mythologising our lives via an internet presence. Rather worryingly, the younger generation desires to be the focus not only of their own media microcosm, but that of everyone else’s. Once synonymous with Orwellian, 1984 standards of terror, we have accepted the spotlight’s pervasiveness and actively seek to appear on Big Brother rather than avoid his stare at any cost. Popular television panders to these desires, with the omnipresence of programmes such as Love Island, I’m a Celebrity and the X-Factor. TV has become as bloodthirsty as Roman amphitheatres. Photography, far from being a simple commentary or reflection of society, has undoubtedly facilitated our age of heightened global awareness, making the taken image one of the most powerful, immediate and telling methods of human communication.
Polly Penrose
The Reeds, Parcel Bows III Suffolk, 2018 Colour photograph 66.7 x 100cm (detail)
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Juno Calypso Anna Fox & Alison Goldfrapp Maisie Cousins Polly Penrose
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L O C AT I O N : T I T H E B A R N
Natalie Krick
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If You Can’t Live Without Me‌2016 Archival pigment print 76 x 51cm
Juno Calypso b.1989 After completing a foundation degree Juno Calypso graduated with a BA in Photography from University of the Arts, London in 2012. During her time at university Calypso began a series of self-portraits disguised as a fictional character named Joyce. In 2015 Calypso spent a week alone at a romantic-themed couples resort in the USA to continue her series of self-portraits. With a suitcase of wigs and lingerie, Calypso posed as a travel writer to gain access to the ostentatiously themed rooms. Her projects have received several accolades including The British Journal of Photography International Award. She has been featured in publications such as Vogue Italia, The Guardian and VICE. Calypso lives and works in London.
Massage, 2011
The Fantasy Suite, 2016
Archival pigment print
Archival pigment print
76 x 51cm
102 x 66cm
Popcorn Venus, 2012
Breakfast, 2014
Archival pigment print
Archival pigment print
102 x 60cm
76 x 51cm
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Hilary and Mom and our hands, Untitled (Country Girls), 1996 C-Type print 50.8 x 50.8cm
Anna Fox b.1961 & Alison Goldfrapp b.1966 Anna Fox began working as a photographer in the early 1980s, emerging as one of the most exciting colour documentary photographers of the time. Fox’s fascinating study of the bizarre as well as the ordinariness of British life resulted in a combination of social observation with highly personalised projects. Since 2006 she has been awarded major research grants from UK India Education Research Initiative and most recently the Leverhulme Trust to lead the Fast Forward Women in Photography international networking project. Alison Goldfrapp is best known as the lead vocalist of the electronic music duo Goldfrapp. With her multi-platinum selling band, Goldfrapp has been nominated for the Mercury Prize and multiple Grammy Awards, winning an Ivor Novello. In the last two years Goldfrapp has dedicated more time to her role as a photographer and director.
Mom in the mirror,Girls), 20131997 Untitled (Country Digital print C-TypeCprint 50.8 x 40.6cm 50.8cm
My mother’s parents, Untitled (Country Girls), 1999 2014 C-Type print Digital C print 101.6 x 152.4cm 40.6 x 50.8cm
Mom on her carpet, 2014 Untitled (Country Girls), 2000 Digital C print C-Type print 61 x 76.2cm 101.6 x 152.4cm
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My mother in bed with roses, Untitled (Country Girls), 1997 2015 C-Type print Digital C Print 101.6 x 152.4cm 50.8 x 61cm 19 19
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slug, 2015 Archival Giclée print 42 x 28cm
Maisie Cousins b.1992 In 2014 Maisie Cousins graduated from Brighton University with a BA in Fine Art Photography. Approaching the female body with unflinching honesty, Cousins portrays her models as they feel comfortable, subverting ideals of perfection in the process. She seldom picks the models for her portraits herself, preferring them to come from her casting calls. This way she feels ‘more comfortable shooting them’. She had her first solo exhibition last year with TJ Boulting and has exhibited in group shows in London, New York, Los Angeles and Texas. Her work has been heavily featured in the press including Hunger Magazine, Creative Review Photography Annual as well as Petra Collin’s Babe published in 2015. She lives and works in London. grass bum, 2015 Archival Giclée print 250 x 166cm
big dick, 2017
orchid, 2015
finger, 2015
Archival Giclée print
Archival Giclée print
Archival Giclée print
250 x 166cm
42 x 28cm
250 x 166cm
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IMAGE The Reeds, Parcel Bows I Suffolk, 2018 Colour photograph 75 x 50cm (detail)
Polly Penrose b.1976 Polly Penrose studied Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Arts in London. She went on to have a career in fashion styling before working for photographer Tim Walker. Penrose has been taking self-portraits on a ten second timer for over a decade. Her pictures focus less on sexuality and female allure, instead retaining the awkward, often beguiling force of the body as an object. This is Penrose’s first series outside. Wrappings, parcel bows and plastic packaging transform her into a mythological, otherworldly creature. The landlocked mermaid, luring walkers to a beastly fate in an East Anglian field. Her work has been featured in The Guardian and The British Journal of Photography as well
The Reeds, Cellophane II Suffolk, 2018 Colour photograph
as The Huffington Post.
50 x 75cm
The Reeds, Parcel Bows III Suffolk, 2018 Colour photograph 66.7 x 100cm
The Reeds, Parcel Bows II Suffolk, 2018 Colour photograph 75 x 50cm
The Reeds, Cellophane I Suffolk, 2018 Colour photograph 100 x 66.7cm
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IMAGE Hilary and Mom and our hands, 2014 Digital C print 101.6 x 76.2cm
Natalie Krick b.1986 After completing her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2008, Natalie Krick went onto study for her MFA in Photography at Columbia College, Chicago, graduating in 2012. Of this series, Natural Deceptions, Krick has said ‘My mother, my sister and I perform for each other, for the camera, and ultimately, for the viewer. We impersonate each other and ourselves, emulating imagery that has taught us how to be beautiful’. The resulting photographs, which appear in Krick’s first book of the same name as the series, won Aperture’s 2017 Portfolio Prize. Krick has exhibited widely in places such as Seattle, London, New York, Los Angeles and Pingyoa, China. Krick lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
Mom in the mirror, 2013 Digital C print 50.8 x 40.6cm
My mother’s parents, 2014
Mom on her carpet, 2014
My mother in bed with roses, 2015
Digital C print
Digital C print
Digital C Print
40.6 x 50.8cm
61 x 76.2cm
50.8 x 61cm
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Andy Warhol Peter Beard Norman Parkinson Neal Slavin Cecil Beaton Mick Rock Angela Williams Ray Bellisario Lewis Morley Angus McBean Daniel Farson Nancy Bundt
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L O C AT I O N : L O N G G A L L E R Y
Charlie Wheeler
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Peter Beard, c.1972 Colour polaroid, signed 10.5 x 8.5cm
Andy Warhol 1928-1987 The most famous proponent of pop art which developed in 60s America, Andy Warhol spent his life probing the relationships between fine art, celebrity culture and advertising. His work encompassed a wide variety of media including painting, silkscreening, film and sculpture. Of his photographic work his polaroid series is the most celebrated, comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of images depicting well-known subjects including Mick Jagger, Jean Michael Basquiat and Grace Jones. The majority of these were shot in his studio against a plain white background. Camera in hand from the age of ten, Warhol would continue his self-described ‘visual diary’ until the day he died in 1987.
Andy Warhol with dog, c.1972 Colour polaroid, signed 11 x 8.5cm
Andy Warhol with Beard collage, c.1972 Colour polaroid, signed 8.5 x 11cm
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Peter Beard b.1938 Peter Beard began keeping diaries as a young boy, with photography becoming an extension of this practice aged twelve. Beard entered Yale as a pre-med student but switched his focus to art and later travelled to Kenya. His photographs of Africa and the journals which often integrate his photography have been widely shown and published since the 1960s. Beard and pop artist Andy Warhol were neighbours in Montauk, New York and often collaborated. Unlike many who built their artistic reputations around Warhol, Beard had established himself as one of the great photographers of the age before meeting the distinguished icon. Beard spends his time between New York and Kenya.
Salvador Dali signing book, c.1963-64 Monochrome contact sheet diptych 11 x 4cm
Francis Bacon, 80 Narrow Street, London, 1972 Monochrome vintage photograph 8 x 7cm
Andy Warhol, Montauk, 1963-64 Contact print tryptic 11.4 x 2.6cm
Salvador Dali signing book, c.1963-64 Monochrome vintage photograph (lower exposure) 16 x 11cm
Salvador Dali signing book, c.1963-64 Monochrome vintage photograph (higher exposure) 16 x 11cm
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Salvador Dali signing book, c.1963-64 Monochrome contact print 5.5 x 5cm
Francis Bacon, 80 Narrow Street, London, 1972 Monochrome vintage photograph 8 x 12cm 31 31
IMAGE Tom Lehrer with Skeleton in Camden, 1959 Unique vintage silver print 50 x 40cm
Norman Parkinson 1913-1990 Norman Parkinson was one of the twentieth-century’s most celebrated fashion photographers with a career spanning seven decades. His photographs anticipated the age of the supermodel and made him the photographer of choice for celebrities, artists, Presidents and Prime Ministers. His many subjects included The Beatles, Twiggy, David Bowie and Jerry Hall. Parkinson worked for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Tatler. By the end of his life he
Sydney Nolan and Models, 1957 Vintage silver print 38.1 x 30.5cm
had become a household name, the recipient of a CBE and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Throughout his life he maintained that he was not an artist but a ‘craftsman’. He died whilst on location in Singapore, shooting for Town & Country in 1990.
Alfred Hitchcock, 1956 Solarised vintage silver print 29 x 37cm
Marlene Dietrich, 1955 Vintage silver print 30.5 x 25.5cm (detail)
Sue Murray for Cadbury’s, 1964 Vintage silver print 50.8 x 40.7cm (detail)
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Ian Fleming at Home, 1964 Vintage silver print 50.8 x 40.6cm
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IMAGE Neal Slavin b.1941 Neal Slavin is a world-respected photographer and film director. He has photographed celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and
Colony Room Club London, 1983 Archival print, signed 61 x 50.8cm
Barbra Streisand. In 1993 he was asked to produce the first official Christmas card of President and Mrs Clinton. He is best known for his group portraits series, including Britons and When Two or More Are Gathered Together. His photographs can be found in institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou and the John Paul Getty Museum. Slavin has worked for most of the major magazines around the world including The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and The Sunday Times Magazine (London). He lives in New York.
The Staff of Chatsworth with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, 1984 Large format colour polaroid, 61 x 50.8cm
Royal National Lifeboat Institution Norfolk, 1983 Archival print, signed 61 x 50.8cm
Custodial Staff Stonehenge, Wiltshire, 1983 Archival print, signed 61 x 50.8cm
Life Models Bath Academy of Art, 1984 Archival print, signed 61 x 50.8cm
Under 11 Cricket Team The Dragon School, Oxford,1984 Large format colour polaroid 61 x 50.8cm
Sisters of the Redemption Convent Devon, 1983 Archival print, signed 61 x 50.8cm
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Rex Whistler & Cecil Beaton Painting at Ashcombe, 1935 Bromide print 11.5 x 8cm
Cecil Beaton 1904-1980 Cecil Beaton is renowned for his photographs of elegance, glamour and style. Beaton acquired his first camera aged eleven and was taught photography by his nanny. Later he would insist his sisters and mother sit for him. Beaton often photographed the Royal Family, with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother being his favourite sitter. Other famous subjects included Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and artists Pablo Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe. After WWII Beaton designed sets, costumes and lighting for Broadway and was the costume designer for My Fair Lady (1964) starring Audrey Hepburn, for which he won an Academy Award (one of three). In 1965 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He was awarded a CBE in 1956 and a knighthood followed in 1972.
Impromptu Picnic at Ashcombe, 1935 Bromide print 24 x 19cm
Sunday Afternoon at Ashcombe,1936 Bromide print 20 x 19.5cm
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David Bowie in Kansai Yamamoto Jumpsuit, Oxford New Theatre, 1973 Limited edition print, signed 50.8 x 41cm
Mick Rock b.1948 Legendary rock photographer Mick Rock is often referred to as ‘the man who shot the seventies’. Rock was instrumental to the creation of the most famous rock n’ roll images of all time, including album covers for Lou Reed’s Transformer and Coney Island Baby and Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack. More recent subjects include Snoop Dogg, Janelle Monáe and Alicia Keys.
Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger and policeman, Portobello Road, London, 1975 Limited edition print, signed 41 x 50.8cm
A feature length documentary SHOT! made by Vice Films detailing his life and career was released last summer and is available on Netflix. Rock has had major exhibitions around the world including Tokyo, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Hong Kong. Born in London, Rock has lived in New York for the last thirty-five years.
Truman Capote and Andy Warhol, New York City, 1979 Limited edition print, signed 50.8 x 41cm
Lou Reed and David Bowie Kiss, Café Royal, Piccadilly, London, 1973 Limited edition print, signed
David Bowie and Mick Ronson, Lunch on Train to Aberdeen, 1973 Limited edition print, signed
50.8 x 70cm
50.8 x 70cm
Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger, Windows on the World, New York City, 1977 Limited edition print, signed 41 x 50.8cm
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IMAGE Paul Newman, 1964 Giclée fine art print, signed 46 x 31cm
Angela Williams b.1941 Angela Williams started her career as a freelancer in the 60s. Aged twenty-one she was introduced to the eminent fashion photographer Norman Parkinson. Williams soon became his personal assistant, resulting in a close working relationship and creative collaboration that continued throughout her subsequent career. She worked with Jeremy Banks on the Observer New Supplement, The Sun Paper and Woman’s Mirror, to name a few. Williams has amassed an impressive range of portraits spanning
Jane Fonda, 1964 Giclée fine art print, signed 23 x 35cm
the duration of her career. Subjects of particular note include Paul Newman, Audrey Hepburn and Jane Fonda. Williams continues to run the Angela Williams Archive – a collection of Parkinson’s vintage prints, dating from 1950-64, as well as her own work.
Barbra Streisand in ‘Funny Girl’, Broadway Dressing Room, 1964 Giclée fine art print, signed 24 x 36cm
Audrey Hepburn, Paris Ritz, 1964 Platinum limited edition print, signed 50 x 36.4cm
Marianne Faithful, St James’ Park, 1964 Platinum limited edition print, signed 45.7 x 38.1cm
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The Pink Floyd, 1967 Giclée fine art print, signed 35 x 24cm
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Ray Bellisario 1936-2018
Untitled (Francis Bacon), c.1960s Monochrome photograph, signed 19 x 19cm
Born the youngest of thirteen children to Italian immigrant parents, Ray Bellisario became a freelance photographer with Fox Photos when he was eighteen. In 1955 he happened to come across the Queen, sheltering under an umbrella in Truro, Cornwall. The resulting image proved to be the opening shot in a long battle between the photographer and the palace. Bellisario could never escape the tag he so disliked ‘nor could he shake off the notoriety he gained as the first British “pap”’, according to journalist Roy Greenslade. Other subjects of his included Winston Churchill, the Kennedy Family and a delightful set of portraits of Brigitte Bardot in a London pub during 1968, several of which are shown here in this exhibition. Untitled (Bridgette Bardot), 1968 Monochrome photograph, signed 25 x 25cm
Daniel Farson 1927-1997 Writer, broadcaster and bohemian photographer, Daniel Farson’s artistic value lay in observing a world whose habitués were too busy drinking to document themselves. He admitted his role as a hanger-on to the world of Francis Bacon and co. In 1993 he published The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon, the first ever book to be written about the painter. Farson, a friend and confidant to Bacon for over forty years, gave a highly personal, first-hand account of the man as he knew him. Most remembered for his sharp, investigative style on early commercial television for the BBC, Farson was also a prolific photographer, capturing faces as famous as Barbara Windsor, Lucian Freud and Richard Burton.
Bridgette Bardot in a Taxi, 1968 Colour photograph, signed 46 x 46cm
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Lewis Morley 1925-2013 Lewis Morley made his name chronicling the ‘new idols’ of the 60s, using a style that captured the buoyant spirit of the times. He took up photography in 1954 and initially worked on magazine assignments for Tatler, Go! and She. Morley is best known for his photographs of playwright Joe Orton and model Christine Keeler. Keeler’s affair with married Conservative government minister John Profumo provoked a major political scandal in 1963 and helped to pave the way for Labour’s success at the following election. Shortly after ‘The Profumo Affair’, Keeler was brought to Morley’s studio in Soho. She had initially agreed to be photographed entirely nude but when she arrived at the studio felt reluctant to do so. Morley emigrated to Australia in 1971.
Untitled (Christine Keeler), 1963 Monochrome photograph, signed 24 x 19cm
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Untitled (Vivien Leigh), 1949 Monochrome photograph, signed 50 x 40cm
Angus McBean 1904-1990 Angus McBean bought his first camera at the age of fifteen and began photographing by using his friends and family as models. After the death of his father in 1924 McBean moved to London. A decade later and he was briefly apprenticed to society photographer Hugh Cecil, who taught McBean all he would need to know. After a year he set up his own studio. McBean is renowned for his theatrical and inventive photography during the 30s and 40s. In the 60s McBean’s career took a new direction as he began taking colour photographs for the LP covers of Shirley Bassey, Cliff Richard and Spike Milligan amongst others. Significant portraits include those of Vivien Leigh, Peggy Ashcroft, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West and, more recently, Tilda Swinton.
Peggy Ashcroft, 1938 Monochrome photograph, signed 34 x 41cm
The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, 1955 Monochrome photograph, signed 46.5 x 36.5cm
Portrait of Vivien Leigh, 1936 Monochrome photograph, signed 47 x 36cm
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Vivien Leigh in ‘Serena Blandish’, 1939 Monochrome photograph, signed 46 x 34.5cm
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IMAGE Prince (blue), 1984 Photograph on archival aluminium 200 x 133cm
Nancy Bundt b.1948 With a unique eye for detail and over forty years of expertise, Nancy Bundt has covered an impressive range within photography. Her most notable assignment was being appointed official photographer for Prince’s Purple Rain Tour during the mid 80s. These photographs are images of a younger Prince, just beginning his career and discovering himself as a musician before rocketing to popstar fame. Her photographs have appeared in over fifty magazines and newspapers internationally including TIME, LIFE and National Geographic Traveller. For the last twenty-five years she has called both Minnesota and Norway her home.
Prince (red), 1984 Photograph on archival aluminium 200 x 133cm
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Get a Life, 2010 Digital print 35.4 x 25.4cm
Charlie Wheeler b.1979 Charlie Wheeler is a British fashion photographer. After completing his degree at Falmouth College of Art, he moved to London and began shooting catwalks as well as backstage at fashion shows. He has shot for Vogue, Love Magazine, Tatler, Louis Vuitton, Vivienne Westwood and Gareth Pugh, amongst others. Having contributed to many group exhibitions, Wheeler’s first solo show was in 2015 at the Subway Gallery in London. He specialises in reportage photography and is commissionable for all
What’s the Time Mr Wolf? 2015 Digital print 35.4 x 25.4cm
types of work, from award ceremonies to private or corporate events. Wheeler lives and works in central London.
Kissing Booth, 2015 Digital print 35.4 x 25.4cm
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Juno Calypso
Breakfast, 2014
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