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A new photography exhibition is about to open on the Isle of Wight featuring the early work of British film director Ken Russell.
Photographs by Ken Russell at Dimbola Museum and Galleries ‘London Lost and Rediscovered.’ 7th October 2011 – extended to 22nd January 2012.
One of the most exciting aspects of TopFoto’s vast collections is that we sometimes discover buried treasure like Ken Russell’s work, and it’s a privilege to be working with him and Dimbola Lodge for this exhibition.” Flora Smith, Partner, TopFoto.co.uk
Ken Russell: film maker, photographer 1954-1957
Prior to earning iconic status as a director, Ken Russell spent several fruitful years working as a freelance documentary photographer in London in the mid-fifties. The photographs he took during this period chart the progress of Russell’s eye from his late twenties and to the turn into his thirties. Sometimes poignant, occasionally surreal and frequently funny, they capture all the irreverence and unconventionality that would characterise his work as a filmmaker.
The images, discovered in 2007 by photographic library TopFoto as boxes of negatives, capture in many cases an almost forgotten period of history: a period of transition from the depressing aftermath of the Second World War to the youth movements and reinvigorated hope of the 1960’s. The full collection documents a journey along a lively Portobello Road where the children, not the cars, still owned the streets (though not for much longer) and the first and only close-up of the infamous Teddy Girls (plenty is known about Teddy Boys – the girls were unrecorded until Ken Russell found them), through Trafalgar Square, the White Chapel Gallery, Holland Park and other insights into the unfolding daily lives of Londoners.
Many of Ken Russell’s images have been carefully restored and printed by London hand printing specialist Robin Bell, to Ken’s exacting specification, and shown widely since 2007, starting in London, Bristol, and the South East of England then travelling to Canada, the Czech Republic, and New York’s Lincoln Centre.
“I know how Howard Carter felt when he opened Tutankhamen’s tomb and saw “wonderful things”. One of the most exciting aspects of TopFoto’s vast collections is that we sometimes discover buried treasure like Ken Russell’s work, and it’s a privilege to be working with him and Dimbola Lodge for this exhibition.” Flora Smith, Partner, TopFoto.co.uk
Ken Russell was a film fan from the start but his early ambition to enter the industry never got further than the studio gates. So he turned to photography, from surrealism to reportage. Shortly to become controversial director of international repute, he never touched his Rolleicord again, but this exhibition is a glimpse of an impressive, meteoric, talent.
All images in the exhibition are signed by Ken Russell and available to buy in limited edition. Prices start at £700
By Flora Smith, TopFoto.
In addition Island Pulse mentioned earlier this year… Ken Russell Film Maker and Photographer Exhibition
In the 50′s as a freelance photographer Ken Russell now 83, captured the great eccentrics of his youth for posterity in photographs which remained unseen for 50 years.
Perhaps better known for his pioneering work in television/film and for his controversial style. Ken Russell born in Southampton, on 3 July 1927 tried several careers; stills photographer, a dancer and the Royal Air Force and Merchant Navy, before ‘making it’ in the film industry.
As a photographer between 1954-1957 Russell operated within the tradition of low-key British documentary photography and is the only photographer of note to have captured fledgling youth culture in London, in a series he called The Last of the Teddy Girls.
Featuring (pictured) a striking 14-year-old called Jean Rayner who looks extraordinarily contemporary compared to the teddy boys that lurk or lark about in the background, making this exhibition a priceless social record of attitudes, style and circumstances.
Russell’s photographs remained unseen for 50 years.
The agency Russell worked for, Pictorial Press, was taken over by TopFoto in the late 1970s, but Russell’s archive was not discovered until 2005. The following year his house in Lymington burned down, but safe in TopFoto’s vaults, the original photographs survived.
Russell’s photographs are fascinating as artefacts from a particularly austere period in postwar Britain. They hint at, rather than anticipate, his later career. He calls them “still films” and acknowledges that they taught him the value of composition. Even then, though, he was a rule-breaker.
Looking now at the often restrained atmosphere Russell’s photographs exude, it’s hard to believe they are a product of the same feverish imagination that created The Devils and Tommy. I have to say I prefer Ken Russell the quiet photographer, although the world of postwar British cinema would have been an immeasurably more mundane place without the louder, more outrageous director. Sean O’Hagan The Observer, Sunday 14 March 2010. Source
Some Links Ken Russell Has Formed With The Isle of Wight
Long before he gained a burst of brief late notoriety by joining – and storming out of – the 2007 Celebrity Big Brother house. Henry Kenneth Alfred “Ken” Russell built up links with the Isle of Wight.
Ken Russell made a landmark television documentary about Elgar in 1962 some of which was filmed in Ventnor and other parts of the Island. In the TV drama Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by Ken Russell for the BBC in 1992, the Isle of Wight doubled for the South of France. Source: Link
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The Old Park Hotel at St. Lawrence was the location for the beach and woodland walk scenes and aviary scenes were shot at the Tropical Bird Park.
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Mandalay scenes, were filmed at the maze at Blackgang Chine, and Lisle Combe, the house at the Rare Breeds Park at St. Lawrence.
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Havenstreet Station, part of the Isle of Wight Steam Railway was featured in the final episode when Lady Chatterley returns home from France.
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The Red Funnel ferry, doubled as a transatlantic cruise liner sailing from Southampton. Ken Russell was able to make the ferry look like a liner – and not like a ferry full of passengers on a normal crossing to the Isle of Wight.
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