Blogs

I have recently acquired a daguerrotype stereoview of Scottish provenance. It shows three men round a table on which is an early Brewster stereoscope, a D&S black and white litho view and possibly a daguerrotype stereo, plus some small tools which could be burnishing tools of the gilding trade.

 

The bookseller Bernard Quaritch Ltd has a copy of Alfred Stieglitz's landmark publication Camera Work on offer. Number 37 contains nine photogravures on Japan tissue were made by the Scottish photographer James Craig Annan (1864–1946) from works by Hill & Adamson. Camera Work was published between 1903 and 1917 during which time fifty issues were made. The Annan number is priced at £2200. 

See: https://www.quaritch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Quaritch-Summer-Miscellany-2025.pdf#page=70

Black Heritage Voices is a conference dedicated to uniting professionals working across various roles within the heritage sector, who work with or are interested in Black archives.  This includes archivists, researchers, audience engagement specialists, community artists and activists, heritage programmers (Black History Month) and those in leadership positions. It is organised by Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage

The event fosters dialogue and exploration around creativity, digital innovation and reframing narratives, with a focus on broadening perspectives within the heritage field and ultimately changing the gaze. Speakers of particular note are  Deborah Willis, Professor of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and Mark Sealy, Curator, Historian and Executive Director of Autograph ABP. 

Black Heritage Voices 2025. The Importance of Black Archives in Preserving Historical Memory
11 November 2025, 0830-1900
Leicester: Jewry Wall Museum, St Nicholas Circle, Leicester, LE1 4LB
£120-135
See: https://www.serendipity-uk.com/event/black-heritage-voices/

John Coster, Director, Independent Heritage Network, discusses personal archives left behind after a bereavement and the next Saturday Heritage Fair which provides an outlet for personal effects left behind, including photographs.

Imagine you’ve just experienced a bereavement. A box of personal belongings – school reports, passports, old photographs, perhaps mementos from a life once lived abroad due to war or economic necessity – has found its way to you. These items, quietly stored away for years, suddenly feel important. They might raise questions. They might offer clues. They might carry weight. But what do you do with them? Who do you turn to if you want to understand more, or contribute what you’ve found to a wider story?

The fair will have 25 themed heritage stalls, a talks programme, and an exhibition in the Basement Gallery.  

See: https://doc-media-centre.org/2025/08/10/who-will-help-challenging-the-narrative-around-personal-items-in-heritage-spaces/

Saturday Heritage Fair
10 October 2025, 1000-1500, cafe open from 0830
Leicester, Adult Education Centre, free

Names such as James Lancaster, Walter Tylar, Marlow Brothers, E & T Underwood and Coronet will be familiar to many collectors and historians. These firms were just as a small part of Birmingham's involvement with photography from the 1840s, ranging from small workshops making equipment, factories, to a network of small firms and outworkers making parts and assembling photographic apparatus for sale around the world. As part of Birmingham Heritage Week James Leighton’s collection of historical cameras and photographic equipment made in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter will be on display in the Heritage Lounge at the Hive. The exhibition includes historic cameras and equipment dated between 1841 and 1950. This is a rare opportunity to see a collection of Birmingham made photographic material not normally on public display.

The exhibition can be viewed Tuesday to Friday (10am–3.30pm) during Birmingham Heritage Week and will close on Fri 26 Sept.

In addition James will leads a walk through Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter showing what photographic equipment was made where and by whom. Although sold out it is hoped more dates might be arranged. More information about the walking tour here

100 Years of Camera Making in the Jewellery Quarter
Arranged by James Leighton and The Hive
Free admission
From Friday, 12 September to Friday, 26 September (open Tuesdays to Fridays, 1000-1530)
The Hive, 3-47 Vittoria Street, Jewellery Quarter, B1 3PE
See: https://birminghamheritageweek.co.uk/event/100-years-of-camera-making-in-the-jewellery-quarter-2/

Image: Gibbons quarter-plate field camera. 

The PhotoLondon resource - PhotoLondon.org.uk - which has been active for many years and hosted by the Museum of London is currently offline. The Museum has recently upgraded its website and may have impacted PhotoLondon. This has been raised with the Museum and is currently under investigation. Sadly, because of the way the site is constructed the underlying data is not visible through archive.org.   

Hopefully, the site will be online before too long.

The only known photographs of Ada Lovelace - two daguerreotypes by Antoine Claudet and a third by an unknown photographer - the three were previous exhibited at the Bodleian Library in 2015. The two daguerreotypes date to c.1843. Lovelace (18145-1852) is considered a pioneer of computing. They passed through the family to the present owner G M Bond. The lot is estimated at £80,000-100,000. 

The lot following (lot 82) comprises two portraits of Lovelace's children and a female member of the Lovelace/Byron family by Kilburn and a Beard patentee. 

Fine Books, Maps & Manuscripts
Bonhams, London
Online, ending 19 June 2025
lot 81. See: https://www.bonhams.com/auction/30730/lot/81/lovelace-ada-the-only-known-photographs-of-ada-lovelace-3/

Read the Bodleian description here

When Martin Parr was fourteen, his teacher wrote that he was ‘utterly lazy and inattentive’ in a school report. He went on to become one of the most successful and sought-after photographers in the world. Martin has published over one hundred photobooks on many different subjects, from seaside resorts to smoking, over his career. Now, for the first and only time, Martin has produced a book about himself, telling his own story, in his own words.

This autobiography combines over 150 of Martin’s photographs – from his earliest snapshots to the work he is doing today – with his recollections and reflections on each image. We meet a boy growing up in suburbia, who collects obsessively and notices everything. We see him exploding into the public consciousness in the late eighties with a series of startling, ultra-saturated colour images of the British seaside – and scandalising the photography establishment in the process. We see society changing over the decades, from the demise of steam trains, through the opening of the first McDonald’s in Moscow, to the transformations of the post-pandemic world.

As Martin shares his story, his distinctive voice delicately captured by his friend, the writer Wendy Jones, he also reveals his approach to work and commissions; his tricks for gaining access and getting the shot; and he divulges his particular passions: for crowds and queues, fetes and placards, bad weather on beaches, and more.

Martin says..."I’ve published over 130 photobooks on many different subjects, from seaside resorts to smoking. This is the first and only time I’ll publish a book about myself. My autobiography is a combination of stories and photos taken from across my life - from my earliest snapshots to the work I’m doing now. It was a way for me to understand my progress as a photographer: to see what has changed, and what has stayed the same, both in my work and in the world. It has allowed me to see how everything is connected"

This is the definitive account of a great photographer’s career, curating the work that has defined his life. By looking at the world through his eyes and his lens, we come away seeing Martin Parr – and ourselves – a little differently.

BPH adds...The book is not a typical biography,  instead it is one befitting one of Britain's great photographers with a focus on Martin's photography. Across 150 chapters Martin speaks to a single photograph tell the story of his life and career, from childhood, to student life in Manchester, and through his early documentary work, and on to The Last Resort, and thence to the present day. His photographs are used a jumping off point to discuss his own life and approach to photography. It's engaging and, even if you've heard Martin speak about his work, Wendy Jones has drawn out new insights into Martin Parr, the photographer, his thinking and into Parr-world. Recommended. 

Utterly Lazy and Inattentive. Martin Parr in Words and Pictures
Martin Parr and Wendy Jones
£30, 312 pages, hardback
Particular Books, published 4 September 2025
ISBN: 9780241740828
Buy here to support the Martin Parr Foundation, signed and on pre-order

Photographs: Michael Pritchard 

Join us at Side for What’s Next?, a public Q&A with Managing Director Laura Laffler and members of the senior team. This is your opportunity to hear directly about what lies ahead for Side as we near the end of our Transforming Amber: Building a Resilient Future project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

In 2023, Side lost its National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) funding from Arts Council England and was forced to close its doors. Over the last year, with support from the Heritage Fund, we have worked to lay the foundations for a more sustainable future. This includes the development of a new business model, changes to our exhibition programme, and the opening up of the AmberSide collection to new audiences through partnerships.

As this exploratory year concludes, we are now ready to share what happens next. This event will outline the next phase of our work. We will present key plans for the gallery and archive, explain how we are adapting to a difficult and uncertain funding environment, and provide updates on our efforts to rejoin public funding streams.

The national picture is challenging. The application process for new NPO funding has been delayed again. Local authority support for the arts continues to fall. But Side is committed to continuing its work and deepening its roots in the North East.

This session is for anyone who wants to understand where Side is heading and how we are continuing the mission that began in 1977. Attendance is free and all are welcome.

Side: What's Next? An open conversation about our future
25 August 2025, 1600-1700
Side Cinema, 5-9 Side, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1JE
Free, registration required. 
Book: https://sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/events/side-whats-next

PhotoMonth returns in October 2025, relaunching with a renewed energy and expanded vision. This year, it will be exhibiting photography across all London areas with an 'E' postcode, from EC1 to SE15, from Hackney to Deptford. This year’s PhotoMonth will showcase the full breadth of photographic practice - from personal to political, street to landscape, portraiture to conceptual work.

Highlights include:

• Collaborations with major institutions, including Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery, Autograph ABP, Flowers East, Four Corners, Hannah Barry Gallery, Gray Gallery, and others.
• The PhotoMonth Hub at Mile End Art Pavilion, hosting solo shows selected from the Open Call, an exhibition by Zed Nelson (The Anthropocene Illusion), and work from recent graduates and academic staff from across the UK.
• City-wide QR-coded interactive map, listing every show and venue for visitors to explore.
• Weekend walking tours led by photographers, curators, and the PhotoMonth team—guiding audiences through exhibition clusters in different neighbourhoods.
• Night walks in Bermondsey, Deptford, and the Docklands.
• Film screenings related to photography, including Q&As with directors and actors, hosted at Hackney Picturehouse.
• Flyposting of photographic works in key cultural areas.
• A mini-symposium on the theme of 'Longing'

PhotoMonth's Steering Committee concists of David George, Tom Hunter, David Edmunds, Sarah Thomson, Zelda Cheatle, Alan Duff, Ian Phillips-McLaren and a Curatorial Advisory Board of Cherelle Sappleton, Avijit Datta, Monica Allende, Fiona Shields and Charan Singh .

PhotoMonth 2025
2 October-3 November 2025
Across East London
See: https://photomonth.co.uk/

Purdy Hicks Gallery is delighted to bring together the work of pioneering 19th-century photographer P. H. Emerson and contemporary artist Susan Derges, exploring their focus on the natural world through their distinctive photographic processes and times. The presentation of original vintage photogravures and platinum prints by P. H. Emerson, has been organised in conjunction with Robert Hershkowitz; the renowned 19th Century photography specialist.

Emerson aimed to preserve the old ways of country life with new photographic methods, using soft focus to create images of the world to reflect natural eyesight. To print photographs in books and preserve their high level of realism and quality, he used the new and expensive gravure photographic process.

Born in Cuba, Emerson moved to England at the age of 13. Introduced to photography on bird-watching trips, he gave up his profession as a medical doctor and pursued a career in photography and writing. He became a founding member of the Camera Club of London in 1885 and was elected to the Council of the Royal Photographic Society the following year. Throughout his life, he wrote about photography, publishing several influential albums and treatises, continuing to debate the purpose and meaning of photography with the photographic establishment. His work is held in major collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London ; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; and the Getty Museum, LA.               

This exhibition presents a selection of images from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads (1886) and Marsh Leaves (1895), which exemplify Emerson’s vision of the English pastoral. These works illustrate traditional rural activities - cutting reeds, casting nets, hunting snipe - set against a shifting backdrop of water and sky. Inspired by the French Naturalist painters, Emerson sought to capture his own rural idyll with a commitment to artistic truthfulness.

Susan Derges (born 1955, London) explores the relationship between the self and nature, the observer and the observed, often working with visual metaphors to reveal invisible scientific and natural processes. Her practice includes camera-less, lens-based, and digital methods, drawing on both landscape and the biological sciences. She is best known for her technique of immersing photographic paper directly into rivers and shorelines to capture the movement of water. Often working at night, she uses moonlight and hand-held flash light to expose her images directly onto light-sensitive paper.

Over twenty years ago, Derges began her river series, but many early prints were marked by stones, branches, or uneven water conditions. Using new technology, she has recently returned to these early works - restoring and transforming them into new images.

Susan Derges and P.  H. Emerson are united by a deep respect for nature and a desire to reflect its rhythms with honesty and care. Emerson captured rural life with clarity and truth, rejecting artificial scenes. Derges, using experimental and scientific approaches, works directly with natural elements; light, water, and plant life. Both artists explore how we observe and live with the natural world. Yet with almost a century between them, the world and our climate has changed dramatically. Shown together, their work sees a quiet, serious engagement with place, time, and the enduring power of the landscape, reminding us of our responsibility to protect and respect it. 

P. H. Emerson, selected by Susan Derges in association with Robert Hershkowitz 
18 September - 18 October 2025
Purdy Hicks Gallery, 25 Thurloe Street, South Kensington, London SW7 2LQ

Images: (top) P . H.  Emerson Setting Up the Bow-Net 1886 Platinum print  27 x 22 cm 10.5 x 8.8 in; (below): Susan Derges Yellow Moon Dandelion 2003-2025 Lambda C Print from Dye Destruction Print Edition of 2 + 2 ap 50 x 42 cm 19.7 x 16.5 in 

Dan Watts writes...Earlier this year, I produced a short retrospective documentary on the life and work of documentary photographer Nick Hedges, who sadly passed away shortly after its release. The film was commissioned by the National Trust and screened at the BAFTA-qualifying Flatpack Festival. 

Post-war, families across the UK were left abandoned, living in poor-quality social housing across the city, originally built in the Victorian era for factory workers. Although these houses were condemned for demolition in the ‘30s, families were still trapped living in slum-like conditions up until the ‘70s due to a lack of newly built social housing. Some were left waiting for 2 or 3 years to move whilst building was in progress.

There was a lack of societal awareness that communities had to live like this in such poor conditions, but Nick Hedges didn’t let them go unnoticed. In 1967, the photographer was commissioned by the charity Shelter to document and uncover the shocking realities of living conditions for working-class families in cities across the UK. His impactful photos raised awareness and sparked important conversations about the right to decent quality housing.

This retrospective documentary, commissioned by the National Trust and Flatpack Festival, shines a light on the man behind the lens, whose eye-opening works sparked a catalyst for change.

Nick Hedges’ photography is a powerful documentation of poverty in 1960s-1970s Britain, capturing the harsh living conditions of working-class communities to raise awareness and inspire change. His legacy feels especially urgent today, with rising inequality, falling living standards, and a worsening housing crisis.

This film Nick Hedges: Home In The Shadows (2025), asks a simple but vital question: Why is housing so important? 

Nick Hedges: Home In The Shadows 
Directed by Dan Watts
2025, 17 minutes
Watch the film here: https://www.danielwatts.net/filmanddocs/nick-hedges-home-in-the-shadows-2025

Auctions of Frances and Elsie Griffiths's notorious photographs of fairies are not unusual as the pictures were wideley sold during the 1920s and 1930s. The history of the Cottingley Fairies does not need repeating here - if you want to learn more visit the new galleries at Bradford's National Science and Media Museum to see examples and the cameras that made the pictures, or read Geoffrey Crawley's masterful history and interviews in the British Journal of Photography. Two examples, along with a photo of Elsie Griifths with her friend Mary Anderson were sold by John Taylor Auctions on 29 July. The lot sold for £2600. 

The lot description read :

2025 marks 100 years since Anatol Josepho patented the Photomaton, the first modern photobooth. Photobooths were installed on Broadway, in New York, and became a game-changer for the world of photography. Their arrival concided with a growing demand for identity documents, but it was their informality and social side that aided their rapid take up. Photobooths became an everyday sight in cities around the world. In the 1950s and 1960s, photobooths were a common feature at fairs, shopping centres and train stations. The booths were loved by everyone, from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, to John and Jacqueline Kennedy, and even used by artist Andy Warhol for his famous series of self-portraits. The photobooth meant people could be in charge of their own images, in their own personal space. 

This autumn The Phootgraphers' Gallery will celebrate the centenary by telling the story of the much-loved photobooth. Through an archival display drawing on private collections, Click! 100 Years of the Photobooth will explore the imperfections and quirks of the booth and highlight fans through the decades. There’ll also be a booth at the Gallery for everyone to create their own selfie souvenir. 

Click! 100 Years of the Photobooth
10 October 2025-22 February 2026
London, The Photographers' Gallery
See: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/click-100-years-photobooth

In partnership with AUTOFOTO 

Radio 4 has been running a series of 15 minute programmes looking at photography through the lives of five ground-breaking photographers. In Speed of Light, Laura Cumming takes us on an exhilarating journey across Britain, America and into Europe through the early years of photography. It was a revolutionary technology that changed the way we see ourselves forever. From Daguerre’s patent, in 1839, this new art hurtles forward at unbelievable speed - from close-up to collage, snapshot to montage, mugshot, news photography and more, all within two or three decades. To tell the story, Cumming delves into the lives of five ground-breaking photographers whose innovations transformed the medium, leaving us with some of the most affecting images ever made.

The five programmes are: 

• Alexander Gardner, the Scottish photographer who became an eyewitness to the American Civil War. Gardner's haunting images, including his iconic photograph of Abraham Lincoln just days before his assassination
• William Notman, sails from Glasgow to Canada to open the nation’s most celebrated studio. Here he invents ingenious ways to depict hundreds of people – together - in the snow and ice, and to bring the outside, as it were, indoors.
• John Jabez Mayall takes the only known photograph of the painter, JMW Turner, as well as the first and most significant photographs of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. Mayall also captures the spirit of democracy with his carte de visites – pocket sized photographs - that anyone could buy of the stars of the day, from Wilkie Collins to Queen Victoria.
• Alphonse Bertillon invents the front-and-profile mugshot that is still used in the solving of crime today.
• Nadar, renowned for capturing the innermost thoughts of his Parisian sitters, who took the first aerial shots, and the first revolving shots, and put interviews with images for the first time, reaching forward to the advent of film and television.

Laura Cumming is Chief Art Critic of The Observer.

Listen to the series here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gd80/episodes/guide

Scottish National Galleries is hosting a hybrid talk on 12 August. Join Resistance photographers Pam Isherwood and Maggie Murray for a discussion about Format,the agency founded as a collective to represent women photographers. Format was established in 1983 and operated for two decades ending in 2003.

Resistance | Format: the Women’s Photography Agency (in person)
12 August 2025, 1245
Free, online and in person at Scottish National Galleries, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Book here: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/tickets/75366

Pam Isherwood, Stop Clause 28 march, Whitehall, London, 9 January 1988, (detail). Courtesy of Pam Isherwood, Format Photographers Agency Archive held at Bishopsgate Institute Special Collections and Archives

A remarkable treasure trove of items which tell the love story of two servants at Brodsworth Hall in South Yorkshire have been donated to English Heritage, the charity announced today (30 July). From a 1900s camera used to take photographs of their early courtship, to engagement presents, their marriage certificate, photographs, letters and other personal items, these objects provide an extremely rare hoard of archival riches documenting the lives of ordinary people in one of the most significant – and sizeable – donation of items relating to servants ever given to the charity. Generously donated by the couple’s grandson, on behalf of the family, a number of the items are on display from today following what would have been the couple’s 109th wedding anniversary.

On the huge estate at Brodsworth Hall, then owned by Charles Thellusson and with hundreds of staff in its employ, there was little reason for Caroline Palmer, a kitchen maid, and Alf Edwards, a valet and situated practically at the opposite end of the house, to ever cross paths. This likely would have remained the case if it were not for Alf’s passion for photography, quite unusual for servants at this time. In need of a space to dry his images, Alf took to using the kitchen as a makeshift studio and, in a twist of Downton Abbey-style fate, fell in love.

In the shadow of the First World War, the pair began courting and quickly became engaged. As was the case at many country houses around the country, many men employed at Brodsworth were conscripted but, owing to ill health, Alf remained and became both valet and chauffeur, while Caroline was promoted to cook. Advised against marriage due to Alf’s poor health, the couple briefly separated, before defying advice and marrying on 17 July 1916. The couple had three happy years, during which Caroline gave birth to two boys, before Alf sadly passed away from consumption (tuberculosis).

Now, their story lives on through over 60 personal items, generously donated by the Edwards family, through their grandson, Gordon Edwards, which relate to their relationship and time at Brodsworth.

Eleanor Matthews, English Heritage’s Curator of Collections and Interiors, said: “It is extremely rare to have such a collection relating to the lives of servants survive, and to have them return to Brodsworth Hall over 100 years later is truly astounding. Alf’s photographs are incredibly important to the history of the site and have provided us with the earliest image of staff at the estate – hopefully in time we will be able identify them all. We’ve learned too that Alf and Caroline were very well liked by the Thellussons, with Charles appearing as Godfather on their first son’s baptism card, and his wife Constance’s correspondence with Caroline after Alf’s death. These beautiful, poignant items tell a story largely unknown to us until now and, thanks to this donation, we are able to add another layer of understanding to the rich fabric of Brodsworth’s history.”

Grandson of Caroline and Alf, Gordon Edwards, said: “My family has cared for these significant items reflecting our family history and the history of Brodsworth for many years, and it has always been a fascinating record for us to look back on. We’re so pleased to be able to donate these objects to English Heritage so they can continue to be cared for, shared with the public, and help to tell the important stories of those people below stairs who lived and worked at Brodsworth Hall.”

While the collection is catalogued and conserved, a few select pieces including Alf’s camera, the carved wooden stool, three pipes, First World War registration cards, postcards, and Caroline’s wedding wristwatch will go on display for the first time at Brodsworth Hall from today.

Separately, the Hall was also home to Peter Thellusson who was a member of the Photographic Society of Great Britain, later Royal Photographic Society, joining in 1883 until his death in 1899. he also exhibited in the Society's annual exhibition. 

Listen to Curator Eleanor Matthews and Gordon Edwards talk about Alf and Caroline’s country house love story in a new episode of the English Heritage podcast: https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=EHE9750864476

See more on English Heritage's Brodsworth Hall and Gardens here: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/brodsworth-hall-and-gardens/

BBC Radio 4's Front Row arts programme carried an interview with Bradford's National Science and Media Museum's director Jo Quinton-Tulloch about the new galleries. The interview was conducted by Nick Ahad, a colleague of fellow presenter Samira Ahmed who had acted as MC for the re-opening event at the start of July. 

Listen to the interview on the Front Row podcast here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002gfxp (from 23m 14s)

Right: Jo Quinton-Tulloch at the opening of the NSMM.

Auction house Sworders is offering a rare carte-de-visite showing Jacob Washington besides the coffin of David Livingstone, made by the London studio of Elliott & Fry in 1874. The story behind the carte is poignant. 

The fourteen-year-old Jacob Wainwright (c.1859-1892) was hired to accompany Dr Livingstone as he explored East Africa. Jacob had been sold to slavery as a child, but was liberated by a British anti-slavery ship and subsequently sent to an asylum for freed slaves in India.

Having contracted dysentery, Livingstone died at Chitambo, near the edge of the Bangweulu Swamps in modern Zambia, on 1 May 1873. Wainwright and two other Africans, Abdullah Susi and James Chuma, resolved to bring his body the 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to the British consulate at Bagamoyo in Zanzibar. Before the journey, Livingstone's heart and entrails were removed from his body and buried in an iron box. Wainwright recorded that a massive blood clot, possibly a cancerous tumour, was found in the lower bowel. At the burial ceremony, Wainwright read from the Book of Common Prayer, and he was also given the responsibility of making a full inventory of Livingstone's possessions.

The Church Missionary Society paid for Wainwright to accompany Livingstone's body back to England and he faithfully guarded the coffin on its journey. The explorer's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey, on 18 April 1874, with Wainwright the only African among the eight pallbearers. Following Livingstone's death, Wainwright stayed in England at Kessingland, Suffolk, and also spent time travelling across the country addressing meetings of the Church Missionary Society, before finally making his way back to Africa, dying in Tanzania in 1892.

Out of the Ordinary
19 August 2025
In person and online, lot 315
See: https://www.sworder.co.uk/auction/lot/lot-david-livingstones-coffin-attended-by-jacob-wainwright/?lot=538766

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World (9 October 2025 - 11 January 2026) at the National Portrait Gallery will be the first major exhibition to spotlight the renowned twentieth century photographer’s trailblazing fashion photography, the core of his illustrious career which laid the foundation for his later successes. Often highlighted, but rarely examined in detail, the exhibition – curated by Vogue contributing editor Robin Muir – will explore Beaton’s contribution to fashion, charting his meteoric rise and distinguished legacy. The exhibition will celebrate how his signature artistic style – a marriage of Edwardian stage glamour and the elegance of a new age – revitalised and revolutionised fashion photography and led him to the pinnacles of creative achievement.

Renowned as a photographer, Beaton was also a fashion illustrator, Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist and perceptive writer. ‘The King of Vogue’ – was an extraordinary force in the twentieth century British and American creative scenes. Elevating fashion and portrait photography to an art form, his era-defining photographs captured the beauty, glamour and star power in the interwar and early post-war eras.

With around 250 items displayed, including photographs, letters, sketches and costumes, the exhibition will showcase Beaton at his most triumphant.

Through several interwoven themes, the world of Cecil Beaton will be examined in detail. The exhibition will follow Beaton’s career from its inception, as a child of the Edwardian era experimenting with his first camera on his earliest subjects, his two sisters and mother (c. 1910), his years of invention and creativity as a student at Cambridge University, to his first images of the high society patrons who put him on the map. Including Stephen Tennant and the Sitwell siblings.

The exhibition will journey through the London of the 1920s and 1930s, the era of the ‘Bright Young Things’ and Beaton’s first commissions for this greatest patron, Vogue, to his travels to New York and Paris in the Jazz Age. Drawn to its glamour and star wattage, Beaton photographed the legends of Hollywood in its Golden Age.

Cecil Beaton’s first royal photographs appeared in the late 1930s. As the Second World War loomed, he defined the notion of the monarchy for a modern age. Appointed an official war photographer by the Ministry of Information, his wartime service took him around the globe.

The war’s end ushered in a new era of elegance and Beaton captured the high fashion brilliance of the 1950s in vivid, glorious colour. The exhibition will end with what many consider his greatest triumph and by which he is likely best known: the costumes and sets for the musical My Fair Lady, on stage and later on screen.

Almost entirely self-taught, Beaton established a singular photographic style; a marriage of Edwardian stage portraiture, emerging European surrealism and the modernist approach of the great American photographers of the era, all filtered through a determinedly English sensibility.

Robin Muir, exhibition curator, said: “Cecil Beaton needs little introduction as a photographer, fashion illustrator, triple Oscar-winning costume designer, social caricaturist, elegant writer of essays and occasionally waspish diaries, stylist, decorator, dandy and party goer. Beaton’s impact spans the worlds of fashion, photography and design. Unquestionably one of the leading visionary forces of the British twentieth century, he also made a lasting contribution to the artistic lives of New York, Paris and Hollywood. It’s a delight to return to the National Portrait Gallery with this exhibition.”

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World
9 October 2025 - 11 January 2026
London, National Portrait Gallery
£23 / 25.50 with donation
Free for Members
See: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2025/cecil-beaton/

Images:  (l to r): Worldly Colour (Charles James evening dresses), 1948. Original colour transparency. The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive, London; The Second Age of Beauty is Glamour (suit by Hartnell), 1946, Original colour transparency, The Condé Nast Archive, London; At the Tuxedo Ball (Nancy Harris), 1946, Original colour transparency, The Condé Nast Archive, New York.  All images courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Archive © Condé Nast.