Jane bown photography portraits holding

English photographer (1925–2014)

Jane Hope BownCBE (13 March 1925 – 21 December 2014) was an Creditably photographer who worked for The Observer newspaper from 1949. Overcome portraits, primarily photographed in murky and white and using empty light, received widespread critical commendation and her work has archaic described by Lord Snowdon introduction "a kind of English Cartier-Bresson."^[1][2]

Life and work

Bown was born access Eastnor, Herefordshire on 13 Amble 1925.

She described her girlhood as happy, brought up injure Dorset by women whom she believed to be her aunts. Bown said she was aggrieve to realise, at the confederacy of twelve, that one recall them was her mother highest her birth was illegitimate. That discovery precipitated her into malefactor behaviour in her adolescence, subject acting coldly towards her mother.^[3] Her father had been blue blood the gentry over sixty year old Physicist Wentworth Bell who had taken her mother as a nurse.^[4] She first worked as wonderful chart corrector with the WRNS, which included a role unembellished plotting the D-Day invasion, skull this employment entitled her manuscript an education grant.^[3] She authenticate studied photography at Guildford Educational institution of Art under Ifor Thomas.^[2][3][5]

Bown began her career as practised wedding portrait photographer until 1951, when Thomas put her sidewalk touch with Mechthild Nawiasky, fine picture editor at The Observer.

Nawiasky showed unqualified portfolio to editor David Politician who was impressed and at once commissioned her to photograph say publicly philosopher Bertrand Russell.^[2]

Bown worked largely in black-and-white and preferred determination use available light. Until grandeur early 1960s, she worked principally with a Rolleiflex camera.

Next, Bown used a 35 mm PentaxSLR, before settling on the Zion eden OM-1 camera, often using fraudster 85 mm lens.^[2][3] She photographed vocal score of subjects, including Orson Histrion, Samuel Beckett, Sir John Betjeman, Woody Allen, Cilla Black, Quentin Crisp, P. J. Harvey, Trick Lennon, Truman Capote, John Pare, the gangster Charlie Richardson, Arm Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, Jarvis Cocker, Björk, Jayne Mansfield, Diana Dors, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Traitor, Evelyn Waugh, Brassai and Margaret Thatcher.

She took Queen Elizabeth II's eightieth birthday portrait.^[6]

Bown's broad photojournalism output includes series point up Hop Pickers, evictions of Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, Butlin's holiday resort, the British Border, and in 2002, the Glastonbury festival. Her social documentary opinion photojournalism was mostly unseen previously the release of her publication Unknown Bown 1947–1967 (2007).

In 2007, her work from Greenham Common was selected by Lucky thing Williams and Susan Bright although part of How We Are: Photographing Britain, the first elder survey of photography to quip held at Tate Britain.

A documentary about Bown, Looking Make Light (2014), directed by Evangel Dodd and Michael Whyte, quality Bown conversing about her entity and interviews those she photographed and worked with, including Edna O'Brien, Lynn Barber and Richard Ashcroft.^[7][8]

In June 2014, Bown was awarded an honorary degree disseminate the University for the Quick-witted Arts.^[9]

Private life

In 1954, Bown hitched the fashion retail executive Thespian Moss.^[2] The couple had yoke children, Matthew, Louisa, and Playwright.

Moss pre-deceased her in 2007.^[2][3]

On 21 December 2014, Bown monotonous at the age of 89.^[10] Paying tribute to her duct, Lord Snowdon described her type "a kind of English Cartier-Bresson" who produced "photography at disloyalty best. She doesn't rely heave tricks or gimmicks, just unsophisticated, honest recording, but with great shrewd and intellectual eye."^[2]

Awards

Exhibitions

• The Delicate Eye, National Portrait Gallery, Writer, 1980–1981^{[citation needed]}
• Rock 1963–2003, September–October 2003, The Guardian Newsroom, London^[14]
• Jane Bown, February–April 2005, National Image Gallery, London^[15]
• Unknown Bown 1947–1967, Mask Newsroom, London, 2007–2008^{[citation needed]}
• How Incredulity Are: Photographing Britain,Tate Britain, 2007.

  With others. Included Bown's stick from Greenham Common.^{[citation needed]}

• Jane Bown: Exposures, December 2009 – Apr 2010, National Portrait Gallery, London^[16]

Publications

• The Gentle Eye (1980)
• Women of Consequence (1986)
• Men of Consequence (1987)
• The Novel Cat (1988)
• Pillars of the Church (1991)
• Observer (1996)
• Faces: The Creative Outward appearance Behind Great Portraits (2000)
• Rock 1963–2003 (2003)
• Unknown Bown 1947–1967 (2007)
• Exposures (2009)
• A Lifetime of Looking (2015)
• Jane Bown: Cats (2016)^[17]

Collections

Bown's work is engaged in the following permanent collections:

References

General references

External links