Patricia Highsmith – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove’ at the New-York Historical Society, Manhattan, New York

Exhibition dates: 14th May – 11th October, 2021

Curators: Brian Clark, Susan Kravitz, and Parker Sargent for the Cherry Grove Archives Collection and coordinated at New-York Historical by Rebecca Klassen, associate curator of material culture

Weekend Guest at Hot House
1958
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

During the 1950s, Cherry Grove provided gay individuals a much-needed escape from the homophobia and the legal and social persecution that many experienced in the era of McCarthyism following World War II. Homosexuals faced physical assault, verbal attacks, family rejection, loss of employment, imprisonment, and even involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation. In the Grove, they could openly socialise and experience a joyful and rare freedom of sexual expression.

I seem to be on a roll at the moment with a series of exhibitions that this archive loves to highlight: human beings who picture, capture, depict, image, or photograph the subversive, marginalised, disenfranchised, hidden ‘Other’ in society – as an act of resistance against living lives of conformity, against the prejudices of patriarchy and religion, and against the oppression of bigotry and discrimination.

This exhibition is no exception.

In the 1950s, in an era of “passing” – where queer people had to pass themselves off as something else, something they were not, in order to keep a job or secure a roof over their heads – it is refreshing to see these candid, vernacular, performative photographs of, admittedly, privileged white gays playing, camping it up and having fun with their liberation and identity construction. Having fun in their lives.

Acknowledgement must be made that this party life on Fire Island in the 1950s was only for the white, middle-upper classes. Black, Hispanic, Latino and poor white gay trash need not apply. But that does not mean that these photographs are any less valuable in documenting queer resistance to the status quo.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to New-York Historical Society for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Curator Confidential: Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove

During weekends and summers in the pre-Stonewall era, gay men and women, including many New Yorkers, traveled to the secluded beach town of Cherry Grove on Fire Island where they found opportunities for sexual exploration and self-expression – behaviour that was both stigmatised and criminalised in the straight world. Together with creative figures like Truman Capote, W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, and Patricia Highsmith, these visitors to the Grove took pleasure in the costumed parties, theatrical events, and liberated atmosphere that this gay sanctuary provided.

On view outdoors in New-York Historical’s rear courtyard, this exhibition explores the gay and lesbian community that flourished during the 1950s in Cherry Grove through some 70 enlarged photographs and additional ephemera from the unique holdings of the Cherry Grove Archives Collection.

Curated by Brian Clark, Susan Kravitz, and Parker Sargent for the Cherry Grove Archives Collection and coordinated at New-York Historical by Rebecca Klassen, associate curator of material culture.

One Hundred Club Party
1949
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

During the 1950s, campy costume parties were held every summer weekend. Attendees, straight and gay, showed off flamboyant outfits that would have otherwise been considered a violation of New York laws prohibiting risqué attire and cross-dressing.

Outside of Bea Greer’s Home, Bea’s Brunch
1951
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

Cocktails, sunbathing, sex, and parties were the norm during summer weekends. Gay men and women found opportunities to socialise out in the open, whether on the beach or on the decks of Grove houses.

Parasol Party
1951
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

Under the guise of dressing up, many men and women were able to play with gender norms at these fabulous cocktail parties, thereby challenging society’s expectations of “proper” behaviour.

Patricia Fitzgerald and Kay Guinness, Cherry Grove Beach
September 1952
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Gay Nathan and Julie Paradise

Kay Guinness (right) was an iconic Cherry Grove figure. Independently wealthy and closeted, she had affairs with women while also being married three different times to men. She flew small airplanes, had her own motorboat, and loved to be part of fashionable society. In the 1950s, Guinness was arrested in Cherry Grove for nude sunbathing on the beach. Her cottage was named No Man’s Land.

The New-York Historical Society presents Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove, an intimate look at one of the first gay beach towns in the United States, on view in New-York Historical’s rear courtyard May 14 – October 11, 2021. The outdoor exhibition explores mid-20th-century gay life in Fire Island’s remote hamlet of Cherry Grove, located on the barrier island south of Long Island, through some 70 enlarged photographs and additional ephemera from the holdings of the Cherry Grove Archives Collection – which works to collect and archive the community’s rich and colourful history.

“Cherry Grove on Fire Island became a weekend and summer destination for gay men and women in the pre-Stonewall era of the 1950s and 1960s,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of New-York Historical. “At a time when they faced homophobia and persecution, the residents of Cherry Grove found a sanctuary where they could socialise and express themselves freely. We are proud to partner with the Cherry Grove Archives Collection to display these joyful images.”

“The Cherry Grove Archives Collection is honoured to exhibit our 1950s Cherry Grove photographs and ephemera at the New-York Historical Society,” said Susan Kravitz, on behalf of the Cherry Grove Archives Collection. “As you walk around this exhibition, we hope you will become aware of the joyous freedom of expression that LGBTQ people demonstrate in so many of these photographs, remembering that pre-Stonewall 1950s was a time when persecution and prosecution ruled the lives of homosexuals in mainland America. Yet the 1950s was a richly creative historical period in Cherry Grove when gay and straight people worked and played together, whether in theatrical productions, costumed cocktail parties, annual balls, or a range of community-sponsored events.”

Safe/Haven: Gay Life in 1950s Cherry Grove is presented in conjunction with the Cherry Grove Archives Collection. Curated by Brian Clark, Susan Kravitz, and Parker Sargent for the Cherry Grove Archives Collection, it’s coordinated at New-York Historical by Rebecca Klassen, associate curator of material culture. Throughout the exhibition, visitors can hear personal, recorded accounts from members of the Cherry Grove community about their experiences and memories; the audio will be accessible to visitors through their cell phones.

At Cherry Grove, gay men and women could socialise out in the open, whether on the beach or on the decks of Grove houses. In the evenings, many gathered at local restaurants or at Duffy’s Hotel bar, where they could enjoy same-sex dancing late at night. Photographs in the exhibition depict scenes of summer events, including theatre performances, an annual regatta, art shows, beach baseball, and an end-of-season costume ball.

Writers, artists, dancers, theatre people, and Hollywood celebrities had been drawn to the Grove since the 1930s. Gay people became the majority of the population during the 1950s and joined with local straight families to work in community organisations. Visitors to the Grove took pleasure in the costumed parties, theatrical events, and liberated atmosphere that this gay sanctuary provided. A sense of togetherness could be felt at campy Cherry Grove costume parties where attendees, straight and gay, showed off flamboyant outfits that would have otherwise been considered a violation of New York laws prohibiting risqué attire and cross-dressing. Under the guise of dressing up, many men and women were able to play with gender norms at these fabulous cocktail parties, thereby challenging society’s expectations of “proper” behaviour. The images on view showcase the abundant creativity in the ebullient social scene. Many Grove house parties were fundraisers for organisations such as the Cherry Grove Fire Department; the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, which organised theatrical productions; the Dune Fund, which preserved the beach dunes; and the Doctor’s House, which provided community medical services.

With more and more gay people arriving in the 1950s, long-standing local residents attempted to reinstate “decent” behaviour, and police raids became common through the 1960s. Men in particular risked being arrested, jailed, and exposed by name in local newspapers. Headlines from the Suffolk County News – “Five Arrested in Cherry Grove Raid” (August 23, 1957) and “Fifteen Seized in Cherry Grove Raid” (August 9, 1962) – on display in the exhibition document these risks.

Safe/Haven also highlights the creative atmosphere appreciated by cultural figures, gay and straight, in Cherry Grove. Writers who rented or visited there included Christopher Isherwood, Patricia Highsmith, and Tennessee Williams. Truman Capote, the novelist, playwright, and journalist whose flamboyant lifestyle contributed to his social celebrity, stayed at Carrington House just outside of the Grove in 1957, where he wrote parts of the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In one of the photographs displayed in the exhibition, Marty Mann – a pioneering member of Alcoholics Anonymous who founded the National Council on Alcoholism – is pictured with novelist, poet, and playwright Carson McCullers, who wrote the bestselling novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Both women frequented Cherry Grove in the summer.

The final section of the exhibition explores the changing community of Cherry Grove in more recent decades. In the 1960s, following developments in the civil rights movement, Cherry Grove became more welcoming to Black and Latino gay people, reflected in photographs from that time. Working-class gay women began spending more time in the Grove in the 1960s, a change from the groups of mostly affluent and financially successful women who were there in the 1940s and 1950s. During the 1980s, the AIDS crisis devastated Cherry Grove. Both lesbians and gay men in the Grove took care of many of their male friends who were dying from the disease. Later on, middle-class lesbians had the financial ability to buy houses that had once belonged to these men, preserving the Grove as a gay community.

Press release from the New-York Historical Society

Ed Burke in Ethel Merman’s Mermaid Costume, One Hundred Club Party
1949
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

Many Grove house parties were also fundraisers for organisations such as the Cherry Grove Fire Department; the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, which organised theatrical productions; the Dune Fund, which preserved the beach dunes; and the Doctor’s House, which provided community medical services. For the One Hundred Club Party, an early fundraiser for the Arts Project, organisers asked attendees to donate $100 to join the festivities.

Two Women Getting Sun
1951
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

Patricia Fitzgerald, Kay Guinness, Mary Ronin, and Bea Greer, Duffy’s Hotel
c. 1950
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Gay Nathan and Julie Paradise

Long summer days on the beach, gay-themed theatre productions, weekend house parties, sitting together in local bars and restaurants, community fundraisers – all these were spaces where gay people and their straight neighbours could form social connections and share experiences that were not possible off-island.

Men on the Beach
c. 1950
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Paul Jablonski

Same-sex relationships were openly expressed and nurtured within this supportive and relatively safe Fire Island community. Men and women who came to 1950s Cherry Grove were free to explore their same-sex attractions, to develop positive gay identities, and to enjoy gay social support networks.

Diaper Party, II
1951
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

House members hosting a party would often send out creative invitations with tongue-in-cheek humour.

End of Season APCG Ball, Community House, Woman with Headdress
September 1954
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

Beginning in the late 1940s, community members in late September ended the season by going to “the Ball.” Some spent the entire summer designing and sewing the outfits they would wear. This tradition continues today. In addition to cocktails, food, and a campy costume contest, attendees were able to dance with same-sex partners within the safety of the Community House.

Young Man Posing for Polaroid
1959
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Don Steeple

Taking photos in Cherry Grove was complicated. People wanted to capture their history but also did not want to be identified, fearing retribution if discovered. The instant Polaroid camera, invented in 1948, produced small-sized photos in a minute but required processing on the spot. Simple cameras models like the 127 Brownie or the Argus C3 were most likely used to take snapshots in 1950s Cherry Grove.

Hot House
1958
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

Cherry Grove homeowners and renters have a long-standing tradition of naming their homes. These names, like Hot House, often have a charm that reflects the character of the community.

DJ Beast and Candy Stevens, Ice Palace
c. 1980
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Valerie Perez and Evelyn Danko

During the 1980s, the AIDS crisis devastated Cherry Grove. Gay men, women, and trans people of all races, religions, and economic status joined together to care for their male friends who were dying from this disease.

New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
at Richard Gilder Way (77th Street)
New York, NY 10024
Phone: (212) 873-3400

Opening hours:
Monday CLOSED
Tuesday – Thursday 11am – 5pm
Friday 11am – 8pm
Saturday – Sunday 11am – 5pm

New-York Historical Society website

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Exhibition: ‘Gay Icons’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Exhibition dates: 2nd July – 18th October 2009

Jill Furmanovsky (British, b. 1953)
K.D. Lang, Le Meridien Hotel, London
1992
Gelatin silver print
© Jill Furmanovsky

“How I wish this selection had been available to me when I was young and trying to make sense of my reactions to the world. How inspirational to have had portraits of the great and the good staring out at me telling me that I was not by any measure on my own.”

“… it is her [K.D. Lang’s] androgynous good looks and tendency to strut on the stage which warms many lesbian hearts.” ~ Sandi Toksvig

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Many thankx to the National Portrait Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Fergus Greer (born England, lives Los Angeles)
Quentin Crisp
1989
Bromide fibre print
10 1/2 in. x 10 3/8 in. (267 mm x 264 mm)
Given by Fergus Greer, 2006
© National Portrait Gallery, London
© Fergus Greer

The first portrait exhibition to celebrate the contribution of gay people and gay icons to history and culture. 60 photographs selected by Waheed Alli, Alan Hollinghurst, Elton John, Jackie Kay, Billie Jean King, Ian McKellen, Chris Smith, Ben Summerskill, Sandi Toksvig and Sarah Waters.

An important photography exhibition, Gay Icons, at the National Portrait Gallery (2 July – 18 October 2009) will celebrate the contribution of gay people – and the significance of the gay icon – to history and culture. Ten selectors have worked with the Gallery to make their own personal choices of six individuals, their ‘icons’. Not only does this exhibition include many well-known icons, who may or may not be gay themselves, it also reveals some surprises and will encourage a wide audience to think about familiar faces in new ways.

The Gay Icons shown in the exhibition will include those people, living or dead, whatever their sexual orientation or interests, who the ten individual selectors regard as inspirational, or as a personal icon. Gay Icons brings together portraits of those people who are regarded as especially significant to each of the selectors, alongside those of the selectors themselves, all prominent gay figures in contemporary culture and society.

Coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York, this exhibition focuses on portraits of both historical and modern figures. The choices provide a fascinating range of inspiring figures – some very famous, some heroic, others relatively unknown. Each icon is presented with information about their personal, and sometimes public, significance, some of it relating to the sitter but much of it linked to the selectors who have been prepared to share their experiences and feelings in their own exhibition texts.

Themes running through the exhibition include inspiration and how the ‘icons’ have inspired each selector in an extremely personal sense to realise their full potential, human rights, stemming from the specific consideration of sexuality, and how this might lead us to consider parallels between the struggles of different minority groups, re-discovery, or rescuing the reputations of figures who might otherwise have been forgotten or, worse, actively disregarded and surprise at some of the perhaps unexpected choices.

The project was developed from an initial proposal made by Bernard Horrocks, Copyright Officer, at the Gallery. The concept quickly evolved to include invitations to ten gay people – each distinguished in different fields – to act as selectors. They were chosen in consultation with their Chair, Sandi Toksvig.

Each selector could freely choose six ‘icons’, although the Gallery decided to limit the choices to photographic portraits, and therefore to subjects who had lived, more or less, within the last 150 years. This also seemed appropriate because within this same period homosexuality was gradually accepted and made legitimate in Britain.

The selectors are Lord Waheed Alli, Alan Hollinghurst, Sir Elton John, Jackie Kay, Billie Jean King, Sir Ian McKellen, Lord Chris Smith, Ben Summerskill, Sandi Toksvig and Sarah Waters.

Sitters include artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney, civil rights campaigner Harvey Milk, writers Quentin Crisp, Joe Orton, Dame Daphne Du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith and Walt Whitman, composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, musicians k.d. lang, Will Young and Village People, entertainers Ellen DeGeneres, Kenneth Williams and Lily Savage, and Nelson Mandela and Diana, Princess of Wales. Their fascinating stories will be illustrated by sixty photographic portraits including works by Andy Warhol, Linda McCartney, Snowdon, Polly Borland, Fergus Greer, Terry O’Neill and Cecil Beaton.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: “Gay Icons is an exhibition in which inspiring stories – both private and public – are shared. These are stories of brave lives and significant achievements, told through iconic photographic images chosen by selectors who are themselves icons.

Text from the National Portrait Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/07/2009 no longer available online

Gisèle Freund (French born Germany, 1908-2000)
Virginia Woolf
1939
© Gisèle Freund

Gisèle Freund (born Gisela Freund; December 19, 1908 in Schöneberg District, Berlin – March 31, 2000 in Paris) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book, Photographie et société (1974), is about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium in the age of technological reproduction. In 1977, she became President of the French Association of Photographers, and in 1981, she took the official portrait of French President François Mitterrand.

She was made Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1982 and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, the highest decoration in France, in 1983. In 1991, she became the first photographer to be honoured with a retrospective at the Musée National d’art Moderne in Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou).

Freund’s major contributions to photography include using the Leica Camera (with its 36 frames) for documentary reportage and her early experimentation with Kodachrome and 35 mm Agfacolor, which allowed her to develop a “uniquely candid portraiture style” that distinguishes her in 20th century photography.

She is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, France near her home and studio at 12 rue Lalande.

See her full entry on the Wikipedia website

Harper & Brothers
Patricia Highsmith
1942
Gelatin silver print
© Patricia Highsmith Collection, Swiss National Library / Swiss Literary Archives, Bern

“… is a significant writer by any standard, but she deserves honouring as a lesbian and gay icon on the strength of one novel alone, The Price of Salt, a wonderfully complex and upbeat representation of lesbian love.” ~ Sarah Waters

Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed “the poet of apprehension” by novelist Graham Greene.

Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted numerous times for film, theatre, and radio. Writing under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan,” Highsmith published the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, in 1952, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Paul Morrissey (American, b. 1938)
Joe Dallesandro
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Morrissey, 1968

Joseph Angelo D’Allesandro III (born December 31, 1948), better known as Joe Dallesandro, is an American actor and Warhol superstar. Having also crossed over into mainstream roles like mobster Lucky Luciano in The Cotton Club, Dallesandro is generally considered to be the most famous male sex symbol of American underground films of the 20th century, as well as a sex symbol of gay subculture.

Dallesandro starred in the 1968 film produced by Andy Warhol, Flesh, as a teenage street hustler. Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 declared his second starring vehicle, Trash, the “Best Film of the Year”, making him a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution and subcultural New York City art collective of the 1970s. Dallesandro also starred in 1972’s Heat, another Warhol film that was conceived as a parody of Sunset Boulevard. …

Underground film career

Dallesandro met Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in 1967 while they were shooting Four Stars, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment “In my movies, everyone’s in love with Joe Dallesandro.”

Dallesandro played a hustler in his third Warhol film, Flesh (1968), where he had several nude scenes. Flesh became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: “His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him”

As Dallesandro’s underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture, he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon.

Dallesandro appeared in Lonesome Cowboys (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972), Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, and Andy Warhol’s Dracula (both 1974), also directed by Morrissey. These last two films were shot in Europe. After filming was complete, he chose not to return to the U.S. He appeared in Serge Gainsbourg’s Je t’aime moi non plus (France, 1976), which starred Gainsbourg’s wife, British actress Jane Birkin.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Lewis Morley (Australian, born Hong Kong 1925-2013)
Joe Orton
1965
Bromide print
20 in. x 16 1/8 in. (508 mm x 410 mm)
Given by the photographer, Lewis Morley, 1992
© Lewis Morley Archive/National Portrait Gallery, London

Gay Icons explores gay social and cultural history through the unique personal insights of ten high profile gay figures, who have selected their historical and modern icons.

The chosen icons, who may or may not be gay themselves, have all been important to each selector, having influenced their gay sensibilities or contributed to making them who they are today. They include artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney; writers Daphne du Maurier and Quentin Crisp; composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Benjamin Britten; musicians k.d. lang, the Village People and Will Young; entertainers Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Savage and Kenneth Williams; sports stars Martina Navratilova and Ian Roberts and political activists Harvey Milk and Angela Mason.

Their fascinating and inspirational stories will be illustrated by over sixty photographic portraits including works by Andy Warhol, Snowdon and Cecil Beaton together with specially commissioned portraits of the selectors by Mary McCartney. McCartney. All are set in a striking exhibition design conceived by renowned theatre designer, Robert Jones …

This exhibition brings together ten selectors, chaired by Sandi Toksvig, each of whom is a prominent gay figure in contemporary culture and society. Each selector was asked to name six people, who may or may not be gay, whom they personally regard as inspirational, or an icon for them.

Their choices provide a fascinating range of figures – some heroic, some very famous, others less well known. In the exhibition the selectors write about their choices and share their own convictions, experiences and feelings. The display also features specially commissioned portraits of the selectors by Mary McCartney.

Anonymous text. “Gay Icons,” on the National Portrait Gallery website [Online] Cited 18/06/2022

“He has touched my heart, just as he has influenced the hearts and minds of people all over the world.” ~ Billie Jean King

“The great single picture is emotionally satisfying, whereas getting a good journalistic story is more about being a professional” ~ Ian Berry

Ian Berry was born in Lancashire, England. He made his reputation in South Africa, where he worked for the Daily Mail and later for Drum magazine. He was the only photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville in 1960, and his photographs were used in the trial to prove the victims’ innocence.

Henri Cartier-Bresson invited Ian Berry to join Magnum in 1962 when he was based in Paris. He moved to London in 1964 to become the first contract photographer for the Observer Magazine. Since then assignments have taken him around the world: he has documented Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia; conflicts in Israel, Ireland, Vietnam and the Congo; famine in Ethiopia; apartheid in South Africa. The major body of work produced in South Africa is represented in two of his books: Black and Whites: L’Afrique du Sud (with a foreword by the then French president François Mitterrand), and Living Apart (1996). During the last year, projects have included child slavery in Ghana and the Spanish fishing industry.

Important editorial assignments have included work for National Geographic, Fortune, Stern, Geo, national Sunday magazines, Esquire, Paris-Match and LIFE. Ian Berry has also reported on the political and social transformations in China and the former USSR.

Anonymous text. “Ian Berry,” on the Magnum website [Online] Cited 16/03/2019

Unknown photographer
Bessie Smith
c. 1920s
Gelatin silver print
Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images
© 1925 Getty Images

“A feisty woman who always stood up for herself… She was bisexual and practically an alcoholic – the perfect icon.” ~ Jackie Kay

Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer. Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.

Read her full entry on the Wikipedia website

Howard Coster (British, 1885-1959)
Sylvia Townsend Warner
1934
Half-plate film negative
Transferred from Central Office of Information, 1974
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Sylvia Townsend Warner (6 December 1893 – 1 May 1978) was an English novelist and poet. She also made a contribution to musicology as a young woman.

Bertram Park. 'Ronald Firbank' (detail) 1917

Bertram Park (British, 1883-1972)
Ronald Firbank (detail)
1917

“He [Ronald Firbank] is celebrated as a master of high camp, but he was also a radical technician and radical homosexualiser of the novel.” ~ Alan Hollinghurst

Bertram Park (British, 1883-1972)
Ronald Firbank
1917

Bertram Charles Percival Park, OBE, (1883-1972) was a portrait photographer whose work included British and European royalty. Engravings of his photographs were widely used on British and British Commonwealth postage stamps, currency, and other official documents in the 1930s. His theatrical portraits were the source for two paintings by Walter Sickert. With his wife Yvonne Gregory, he also produced a number of photographic books of the female nude. He was an expert in the cultivation of the rose and the editor of The Rose Annual.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank (17 January 1886 – 21 May 1926) was an innovative English novelist. His eight short novels, partly inspired by the London aesthetes of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, consist largely of dialogue, with references to religion, social-climbing, and sexuality.

Unknown photographer
Winifred Atwell (detail)
c. 1950s
Courtesy of Getty Images

“Winifred Atwell’s piano performances were simply captivating. She showed me what was possible and was a total inspiration.” ~ Elton John

Una Winifred Atwell (27 February or 27 April 1910 or 1914 – 28 February 1983) was a Trinidadian pianist who enjoyed great popularity in Britain and Australia from the 1950s with a series of boogie-woogie and ragtime hits, selling over 20 million records. She was the first black person to have a number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart and is still the only female instrumentalist to do so.

Read the full entry about this amazing women on the Wikipedia website

Elliott & Fry was a Victorian photography studio founded in 1863 by Joseph John Elliott (14 October 1835 – 30 March 1903) and Clarence Edmund Fry (1840 – 12 April 1897). For a century the firm’s core business was taking and publishing photographs of the Victorian public and social, artistic, scientific and political luminaries. In the 1880s the company operated three studios and four large storage facilities for negatives, with a printing works at Barnet.

The firm’s first address was 55 & 56 Baker Street in London, premises they occupied until 1919. The studio employed a number of photographers, including Francis Henry Hart and Alfred James Philpott in the Edwardian era, Herbert Lambert and Walter Benington in the 1920s and 1930s and subsequently William Flowers. During World War II the studio was bombed and most of the early negatives were lost, the National Portrait Gallery holding all the surviving negatives. With the firm’s centenary in 1963 it was taken over by Bassano & Vandyk.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Elliott and Fry
Alan Turing
29 March 1951
Vintage bromide print on photographer’s mount
6 3/8 x 4 5/8 in. (162 mm x 117 mm)
Given by the sitter’s mother, Ethel Sara Turing (née Stoney), 1956
© National Portrait Gallery, London

“Turing was one of the most brilliant men of the first half of the twentieth century, but the refusal of post-war society to accept his sexuality drove him to commit suicide… We can and should honour him now.” ~ Chris Smith

National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
London WC2H 0HE

Opening hours:
Closed until 2023

National Portrait Gallery website

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