The National Portrait Gallery has announced its opening programme with photography to the fore. The first exhibition will explore the life and career of twentieth century photographer, Madame Yevonde, who pioneered the use of colour photography in the 1930s. The show will survey the portraits and still-life works that the artist produced throughout her sixty year career, positioning Yevonde as a trailblazer in the history of British portrait photography. Since 2021 the NPG has owned much of Yevonde's archives and negatives and the exhibition will show vintage work alongside never-before-seen colour prints made from her negatives. A new book will accompany the exhibition. The exhibition is part of a three-year programme surveilling women in portraiture.
Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm will share, for the first time, an extraordinary archive of rediscovered and never-before-seen photographs taken by Paul McCartney. Shot during the period in which John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were propelled from being the most popular band in Britain to an international cultural phenomenon, the exhibition provides a uniquely personal perspective on what it was like to be a ‘Beatle’ at the start of ‘Beatlemania’. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
In 2024 the gallery will show 150 vintage prints from Julia Margaret Cameron alongside that of contemporary artist Francesca Woodman.
Nicholas Cullinan. Director of the NPG was asked by BPH how photography would be presented in the new NPG galleries and said that photography would be woven in to the displays throughout the gallery and would also have a gallery dedicated to photography as a medium.
The NPG re-opens on 22 June 2023.
Yevonde. Life and Colour
22 June – 15 October 2023
Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm
28 June – 1 October 2023
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron. Portraits to Dream In
21 March – 30 June 2024
https://www.npg.org.uk/
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