Rare prints by 1960s music and fashion photographer the late Brian Duffy are set to feature in a new exhibition next month (Duffy: The Lost Portraits, 22 March to 13 May, Proud Chelsea, www.proud.co.uk).
Here you get a sneak peek at the collection, taken from a limited archive after Duffy attempted to burn most of his negatives in 1979.
Duffy revolutionised British fashion photography in the 1960s along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan. Unlike many photographers, these controversial artists took their models on to the streets and snapped them with newfangled, small 35mm cameras.
He worked for Vogue, shooting models such Jean Shrimpton and Brigitte Bardot and photographing such as greats Sammy Davis Jr, Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Nina Simone, John Lennon, Sidney Poitier, Harold Wilson and Charlton Heston.
Then in 1979 after a particularly testing day in his studios, Duffy tried to burn all of his negatives. Only a small number of images were saved - including the ones featured here of Jane Birkin, John Lennon, David Bowie and Jean Shrimpton.
Speaking in a series of interviews before his death in 2010, he said of that day: “I decided to knock it on the head, and that I would never take another picture. I decided to burn all my negatives in the garden. I felt everything I had to do and say in photography had been done. Later I wished I'd kept some negs. Looking back on odd things we've found, I'd love to have known the sequence of prints, only from an historical point of view. You make decisions in one period that you wouldn't necessarily make in another. But it's stimulating to try something new, it's interesting to be crazy.”
Here you get a sneak peek at the collection, taken from a limited archive after Duffy attempted to burn most of his negatives in 1979.
Duffy revolutionised British fashion photography in the 1960s along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan. Unlike many photographers, these controversial artists took their models on to the streets and snapped them with newfangled, small 35mm cameras.
He worked for Vogue, shooting models such Jean Shrimpton and Brigitte Bardot and photographing such as greats Sammy Davis Jr, Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Nina Simone, John Lennon, Sidney Poitier, Harold Wilson and Charlton Heston.
Then in 1979 after a particularly testing day in his studios, Duffy tried to burn all of his negatives. Only a small number of images were saved - including the ones featured here of Jane Birkin, John Lennon, David Bowie and Jean Shrimpton.
Speaking in a series of interviews before his death in 2010, he said of that day: “I decided to knock it on the head, and that I would never take another picture. I decided to burn all my negatives in the garden. I felt everything I had to do and say in photography had been done. Later I wished I'd kept some negs. Looking back on odd things we've found, I'd love to have known the sequence of prints, only from an historical point of view. You make decisions in one period that you wouldn't necessarily make in another. But it's stimulating to try something new, it's interesting to be crazy.”
