My feature on the work of the late fashion photographer David Parkinson is in the June issue of GQ UK, which is out now.
Visit GQ online here.
Archives
‘The second nastiest little man I have ever met’ – John Deakin: Under The Influence + The Lure Of Soho
“The second nastiest little man I have ever met” – Barbara Hutton
“He was a member of photography’s unhappiest minority whose members, while doubting its status as art, sometimes prove better than anyone else that there is no doubt about it” – Bruce Bernard
The documentary portraiture of British fashion photographer John Deakin from the 1940s to his death in the early 70s is poised for a fresh round of appraisal with next week’s opening of the exhibition Under The Influence at London’s Photographers’ Gallery.
This coincides with the publication of Robin Muir’s companion book of the same title.
Muir is Deakin’s foremost proponent, responsible for 2002’s A Maverick Eye. This collected Deakin’s so-called “street photography” in London and on the Continent compiled during bouts of employment for British Vogue. As the title suggests, the new book focuses on the inhabitants of the stamping ground most associated with Deakin’s lush life: Soho.
On Deakin’s death in May 1972, his friend and subject Bruce Bernard rescued what comprises Deakin’s body of work in this field from a set of tatty cardboard boxes under the bed in his Berwick Street flat.
The Teds are back: McLaren + Westwood’s Let It Rock in the NME and the Evening Standard August 1972
As a follow-up to my recent post about the Rock N Roll revival show held at London’s Wembley Stadium in August 1972, here is another selection from the media surrounding the event.
The New Musical Express dedicated a section to reviewing the show, decking staffers Danny Holloway, James Johnston and the late Tony Tyler in appropriate clothing from Let It Rock. The journalists were photographed outside Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s outlet at 430 King’s Road by Robert Ellis.
The capital’s daily paper the Evening Standard’s special issue – billed as the official programme – also included images taken outside Let It Rock, including assistant Addie Isman in one of the store’s then-new studded t-shirts (this one emblazoned with the phrase Rock N Roll Ruby) and customer and prominent London Ted Bill Hegarty in full regalia.
The images of the Evening Standard special issue are from the copy owned by collector Takeshi Hosoya, whose Japanese clothing label Peel + Lift can be viewed here.
Many thanks to Robert Ellis for permission to use his shot in the scan from the NME. Visit Robert Ellis’s Repfoto site here.
Photography: David Parkinson shoots Acme Attractions
I’ve been enjoying researching materials relating to the late photographer David Parkinson for a feature for GQ magazine, so thought I’d share some of the images I dug out of the Parkinson archive concerning the 70s King’s Road retro clothing store Acme Attractions.
Parkinson’s position as fashion editor of Paul Raymond’s sophisticated soft-porn magazine Club International enabled him to style and present Acme clothing for a wide readership, on occasion using the shop team as models.
Acme was opened by Parkinson’s friend Stephan Raynor (they’d known each other since they were part of a gang of style-obsessed teenagers in Leicester in the early 60s) with John Krivine, previously a Brixton-based jukebox dealer, in 1974.
Continue reading Photography: David Parkinson shoots Acme Attractions
Mr Freedom designs at the V&A: ‘When what has been considered bad taste is suddenly found to be invigorating’
“There is a moment when ‘good taste’ becomes dead; what has been considered ‘bad’ is suddenly found to be invigorating. Fashion today has little to do with la mode and the tacky is often accepted as an essential part of the necessary ‘total’ look. It can be fun.”
Cecil Beaton, introduction to the catalogue for the 1971 V&A exhibition Fashion: An Anthology
Recent visits to the V&A’s Archive of Art & Design have proved fruitful, particularly a viewing earlier this week of the collection of Pop Art clothing sold through London boutique Mr Freedom in the late 60s and early 70s.
Coming this week: Lucy Harrison’s multi-layered Carnaby Echoes + Nick Knight’s PUNK at Showstudio
I’m involved in a couple of events which open in London this week: artist Lucy Harrison’s multi-layered project Carnaby Echoes in the West End and photographer Nick Knight’s exhibition Punk at his Showstudio space in SW1.
Reginald Alan Westaway: Artist + outsider
Property Of A Gentleman, the exhibition opening at Prague’s Svit gallery at the end of the month, will cast much-deserved light on the life and creative outpourings of Reginald Alan Westaway, the British outsider artist and recluse.
Westaway died in 2008, the walls of his house in Herne Bay, Kent, scrawled with diagrams and plans for a lute he was making at the point of his demise. The words were written in Latin and the discarded instrument was propped amid the detritus of decades: empty wine bottles, documents and reference papers, threadbare clothes, packaging and paper bags. The “drawing room” was frozen in time – the curtains hadn’t been opened for years- and the surfaces in the house were submerged under accumulations of spiders’ webs.
From this clutter emerged a complete oeuvre indicating a singular artistic life, self-catalogued and apparently self-sufficient. Westaway’s achievements would have rested in obscurity were it not for the devotion of M.Goldstein’s Nathaniel Lee Jones, who is collaborating with the artist Dirk Bell on the forthcoming exhibition, the Czech title of which is Majetek ušlechtilého muže.
70s fashion: Ika in Ossie + Celia by Herb – but whose are the shoes?
Here’s another gem from Herb Schmitz’s photographic goldmine: model Ika Hindley at west London restaurant Julie’s in an early 70s shoot for Dutch agency Kippa.
Continue reading 70s fashion: Ika in Ossie + Celia by Herb – but whose are the shoes?
All satin, no tat, 1971: Kansai Yamamoto, Michael Chow, David Parkinson, Tommy Roberts, Barney Wan et al
The joy of writing about a subject as rich as Tommy Roberts is that research turns up an apparently limitless supply of fabulous material.
Even the tangential stuff – such as this from my archive, a spread from a 1971 Sunday Times Magazine – gets me going.
Roger Burton on the Michael Hochong collection
Following yesterday’s post about the exhibition of Michael Hochong’s incredible clothes, the Horse Hospital’s Roger Burton has given an account of how he came by the collection and his personal connection to this “very beautiful man”.
Continue reading Roger Burton on the Michael Hochong collection