Unidentified Photo Object

Nothing spooky to report today, other than this Halloween emoji. Even that is a castoff from the emoji I couldn't get to work in Twitter.

Anyway, enough about my digital incompetence. I have had two rather underwhelming gallery visits recently, not for the subject matter but for the presentation. Galleries in Shoreditch seem to think that presenting photographs without captions or with minimalist captions is somehow doing the art a favour. I disagree.

Last week I saw the Syd Shelton: Rock Against Racism exhibit at Autograph ABP, touring the cool, white space at Rivington Place in quick time, partly because the accompanying information was so utterly inadequate. Photo after photo was captioned with a location and a date, but no information on the subject. Who were those young people slouching against a wall in Hackney? Those two girls at a rally? No idea. In some cases the identifing info could be quite important, as Shelton shot both anti-racist and far right participants. One should not get confused as to who was who!

Moreover, what information was given in the captions was annoyingly shabby. "Jimmy Percy" was some kind of singer, apparently, who performed at the famous RAR gig at Victoria Park in 1978. It wouldn't take more than a quick web search to work out this character was actually Jimmy Pursey. Similarly, "Dennis Bovel" is actually Dennis Bovell, not only a musician but also producer of some renown. I met him some years back at a Slits gig and told him how great the production is on The Slits' Cut. I'm sure there were other slip-ups I missed, but mis-spellings in exhibits is a bugbear of mine and spoils the viewing. If it's important enough to go in a gallery, the text should be given as much attention as the artwork.

At least there were captions in that exhibit. When I stopped by After the Fall: Berlin 1990/2000 at Red Gallery a couple of weeks ago, I found three walls of photos with no captions at all. What the heck? Who were all those people, I wondered. What were their squats called? What was their relationship to techno? as an introductory text opined. I found it a most frustrating experience and did not linger long. Context matters.

Frida

I made the briefest of visits to this exhibit at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in West London. I arrived with great expectations and left rather bemused at the minimalism of the presentation. The text on the gallery's website is far more revealing than anything in the gallery: no brochure, no captions, no supporting materials were to be seen for Ishiuchi Miyako's documentation of Frida Kahlo's personal belongings, long stored in a bathroom at the painter's home.

The photos could be similarly brushed aside, shorn of their context. But, if you do know anything of Kahlo's extraordinary life, the photos do reveal some stark realities, tenderly realised. The vivid dresses. The chic sunglasses. And the shoes. One image stuck with me, but I can find no reproduction of it: two shoes shot from behind. Bright red. And then one notices that one has a much higher heel, stacked, than the other. These were shoes that must have been custom-made for the artist, to compensate for one of her legs being shorter than the other. I stopped short and stared at this image, struck by its poignancy.

The other notable images include hammer and sickles that seem to have been hand-drawn on her corsets, often sewn into her dresses. To me, these speak of a defiance and a sense of humour: often confined to her bed, Kahlo made her mark on her immediate surroundings and dressed for the stage beyond them. Even her clothes were a canvas.

Chris Stein/Negative

I thought I was too late with this, as Chris Stein/Negative: Me, Blondie, and The Advent of Punk was meant to close today, but this exhibit of photos by Stein has been extended to 8 February. Very good news for lovers of punk/New Wave and New York's indigenous contribution, the very grotty No Wave.

Best known as guitarist for Blondie, Stein has a fine eye and a long-standing practice as a documentary photographer working in black and white. As one might expect for one so engrained in the New York music scene, Stein's work provides an entree to the CBGBs crowd and their cohort, including a lovely portrait of Basquiat. But, he also captures some of the West Coast contingent, with many shots of a very young Joan Jett, including her lounging in her "notorious Los Angeles apartment", handcuffs and other accoutrements dangling above her head. "Wahey!" I noted to my friend B., a punk veteran who had seen pretty much everyone in the bygone era and was thrown into many a reverie, including one recollection of time spent at Jones Beach under some influence, ahem.

My eye was taken by a shot of a handsome blond head spied from across the room. "Oh, Billy Idol!" I thought. But, no. On close inspection, it was none other than The Avengers' Penelope Houston, looking more androgynous than usual. Sadly, the caption identified her band as hailing from Los Angeles, rather than San Francisco, which led to much tsking on my part.

In addition to the star names, there are many shots of long-gone and not so well-remembered figures, many dead from HIV or drug abuse, which illustrates the other side of 1970s New York. While many rhapsodise over its magnetic and creative qualities, I well remember the city as being pretty seedy and grim in many ways. One shot shows Debbie Harry reclining on a car. The caption notes the hood (bonnet) is sealed with a lock to prevent battery theft. Yes, really.

Debbie Harry by Chris Stein

I hadn't mentioned Harry up to now, but she is the undisputed star of the show. Not surprising, as she and Stein lived and worked together back in the day. And he obviously found many opportunities to work her into photos. And, let's be honest, who wouldn't? There's Debbie standing by a window, backlit like a Bond girl. Debbie on a train somewhere on tour, looking amazing in a beret. "A classic look", observed Bev. And she's on quite a few postcards, too. "Picture This", indeed.

This week: Yeastie Girls premiere

I've been busy in the darkroom, printing printing away some of my ancient negatives in anticipation of a film I would like to make (and which may still happen) on my visit to the UK 20 years ago, which happened to coincide with the Huggy Bear-Bikini Kill tour. I only wrote snippets about it at the time, some of which appeared in my newspaper column and some in an article for Deneuve. But, I have held onto the tape and negatives, hoping I would eventually put something more substantial together.

Well, this Thursday sees a tiny part of that realised, as I have some text and a photo in the Yeastie Girls exhibit on the idea of Riot Grrrl. A puzzling title, as the Yeastie Girlz had nowt to do with Riot Grrrl, but I guess the curators liked the name.

I am given to understand that Vyner Street is the hip new art street in ye old Hackney. Not my typical stomping ground. Nevertheless, it is timely to reconsider Riot Grrrl, and for some of us it never went away anyway!

Printing has been delightful. I have been experimenting with various methods of solarisation, with quite varying results (including one accident with a machine solution), and will be pursuing this in future with other subjects, I think.

The exhibit runs for two weeks.

Jo Spence: Work (Part I)

The rather proletarian title has a double meaning--an introduction to the work of the late photographer and a hint as to her interests and is half of a two-part exhibit (the other in Studio Voltaire) that marks the 20th anniversary of her death.

It's a bit of an unwieldy beast, with a slide show, lengthy texts lining the walls and precious few prints of Jo Spence's work. In light of the current wave of feminist responses to pop culture and commentary (Bitch, Bust, Vagenda), it's interesting to note Spence's witty, feisty ripostes to everyday sexism and injustice, whether depicting her relationship with her mother, noting the absence of childcare for working women or grotesque adverts for "female" products.

The Hackney setting is also appropriate for a member of Hackney Flashers photography group, which had a socialist outlook and politicised raison d'etre. While Spence became best known for her self-portraits depicting her struggle with cancer, this exhibit gives more space to her external interests.

Happy IWD

Hope you are enjoying International Women's Day, which has been trending at the top of Twitter's topics all day.

The news has been mixed, with a BBC exec stating the corporation no longer worries about gender; Pussy Riot still in jail; and an exhibit of women musicians shot by women snappers opening in London.

Here's Pussy Riot in action.

Glamour of the Gods

Now into its last month or so, the Glamour of the Gods exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery delves into the John Korbal collection to showcase the so-called golden age of Hollywood, when stars were STARS.

What is most striking, aside from the super-high production values of these portraits, is the extreme and, now, obvious artifice involved. Nothing was left to chance--not the clothes, the lighting, the framing and, of course, the correction.

In the pre-Photoshop age, this must have been quite labour-intensive, but as one example showing Joan Crawford pre- and post-retouched shows, it makes all the difference. Gone are those freckles, worry lines, and, indeed, anything that might show her actual facial features. Wouldn't want those to get in the way of the arched eyebrows that were her trademark. Odd how influential this look was.

Still, it's always welcome to see Marlene, Katharine, Greta and others splendidly turned out, looking down on all us little people.

When Ida Met Bridget

Earlier in the week I popped into the National Portrait Gallery to check out the new exhibit, tantalisingly titled Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer, 1908-1974 (actually, having the dates in the title rather spoils the effect). That's quite a promise and the exhibit, to my mind, doesn't live up to the title.

Ida Kar sounds like a fascinating character, born in Moscow, educated in Paris, an established photographer in Cairo before she moved to London in 1945 and opened a gallery with her husband. She worked in several areas of photography, including portraiture and photojournalism. In fact, in some ways, her career paralleled that of Lee Miller, who has also been "rediscovered" after a period of neglect.

But, I didn't have nearly as strong or favourable a response to Kar's work, which occupies one corner of the NPG, divided up into various alcoves, illustrating her different eras, including trips to Havana and eastern Europe.

Much of the exhibit is devoted to her portraits of actors and artists of the mid-20th century, but I found this the dullest section, firstly, because I didn't recognise many of the names (how quickly the famous are forgotten!), but secondly, because they followed a rather staid formula: serious-looking artiste stares down the camera, surrounded by the detritus of his (and they are overwhelmingly male) profession. If he's a writer, he sits at a desk surrounded by books. If he's an artist, he stands by one of his works in a studio. The pictures were perfectly competent, but the subjects seemed rather stiff and self-important. I didn't feel invited into their worlds, fascinating though they may have been.

The one exception to this was a marvellous portrait of Bridget Riley. Positioned between two planes of one of her signature Op art pieces, Riley seems to actually emerge from her own art work and stares up at the camera, looking pensive and ever so slightly vulnerable. Partly, this is owing to the high angle of the shot, which is unusual in Kar's work. But, part of it must be down to something caught between Riley and Kar which is curiously absent from the rest of the show.

By chance I had just seen Riley's exhibit over the road at the National Gallery and was struck by her working methods and her presence in her studio, surrounded by assistants, recorded for a rather stodgy TV feature in 1979. Kar's portrait, shot in 1963, shows her in an earlier phase of her career, a promise of things to come.

Deptford's Dreaming

It's all happening at the Old Police Station. Last night saw the opening of Ben Graville's photo exhibit, Deptford's Dreaming, in the Metropolitan Tea Rooms. The word "characters" was used a lot in the conversation of guests, as they pointed out local figures of renown or notoriety. Tea Rooms boss Jaine Laine, who presides over the yet-to-be realised Deptford Museum, which will eventually house Graville's photos, struck a sombre note as she lit a candle to honour one subject who was murdered. Graville's eye is drawn to the more marginal areas of life, the "before", rather than the "after" of local gentrification. Photos of security tags on clothes, drug paraphernalia and piles of rubbish probably aren't the face that the local authorities wish to showcase, but they reflect a scruffy defiance of homogenisation.

As guests mingled inside, perusing the pictures and quaffing wine, outside in the courtyard an array of "characters" was drawn to the window, through which the England game played on the tiniest of TVs. Rain fell, a vuvuzela was tooted and one man played guitar as a discordant accompaniment. Extraordinary.

The courtyard houses a collection of freight containers-turned-rehearsal spaces, one of which is now a recording studio, having been opened by royalty-in-residence Jaine Laine last week. The newly dubbed Amersham Vale Studios hosted its first session, as Berlin one-woman-band Golden Diskó Ship recorded five songs for my show on Optical Radio. The session will air next month. I could not be prouder, as it has been my aim to get more live music on the show, another step in our upward surge and, well, scruffy defiance of homogenisation.

Gay Icons

National Portrait Gallery, London
through 18 October

In an age in which empty celebrity is exalted above achievement, in which 75% of UK girls aspire to be WAGs (according to this morning's Radio 5), an exhibit called Gay Icons poses some interesting questions: what is an icon? What is a gay icon? Is it someone to aspire to be? Someone who is inspirational? Someone specifically gay who is inspirational to other gay people?

Well, the answer certainly does not lie within the confines of the portraits on display at the NPG. With minimal text accompanying the pictures, I was unsure as to the thinking behind the choices. A panel of 10 "selectors", chaired by Sandi Toksvig, chose a total of 60 portraits. It would have been very interesting if this panel had convened and argued over every single choice, Mercury Music Prize style, but it seems they made their choices in isolation.

Accordingly, each icon seems to have been chosen on the whims and criteria of the individual selector. And some conform to type: Lord Waheed Alli, who made his name in TV, chooses celebrities such as Will Young and Princess Diana. Sir Ian McKellen, a founder of Stonewall, chooses campaigners, such as Angela Mason and Harvey Milk. Writer Alan Hollinghurst chooses writers and composers such as Tchaikovsky and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Where the exhibit picks up considerably is in the quirky choices. Graham Taylor? Nelson Mandela? Well, yes, if you are Sir Elton John and Billie Jean King, respectively. The first makes some kind of sense, given Elton's connection to Watford Football Club, while BJK speaks of Mandela's dignity in the face of oppression. But, clearly there is no unifying agreement on just what makes a gay icon.

The portraits are also of varying quality. Some are glossy PR shots, such as the one of the Village People (an Alli choice), while the one of Martina Navratilova (a Ben Summerskill choice) is a press shot taken after a Wimbledon triumph.

Chris Smith's choices include no fewer than three subjects who killed themselves, suggesting a link between gayness and tragedy or at least gay icon status and tragedy which is echoed by other selections such as Diana and Bessie Smith (selector Jackie Kay even states that Smith's bisexuality and alcoholism make her a perfect choice as an icon, to which I can only reply: WTF?!).

Surely, in the modern age one could sever this link. But, perhaps his point is that even such high achievers as Alan Turing and Virginia Woolf suffered from social prejudice or mental illness, making them vulnerable beings.

I found myself drawn to two photos, in particular, which hint at the subject's personality and some kind of otherworldly, steely inner quality which would allow for survival and success in the face of such travails. The first was a black and white shot of the social reformer Edward Carpenter (another McKellen choice), pictured in what looks like the entrance to a garden. There is something quite defiant about his jaunty pose, in three-quarters profile, and slightly slouching in his natty plus fours, hat and tie. Even his sandals can't detract from the portrait of a dandified mystic.

The second was of author Patricia Highsmith (a Sarah Waters choice), whose most famous creation, the shape-shifting Tom Ripley, continues to entrance modern readers and filmgoers. In a 1960s publicity shot, Highsmith, whose life spanned the pre-and post-Stonewall eras, gazes moodily at the viewer while holding a book. With her sleeves rolled up, and peering out from her tousled fringe, she oozes sensuality as well as gravitas. Clearly, a woman who means business and my kind of icon.

Accompanying the exhibit is a series of talks and performances, which includes a gig by the Raincoats on the 25th.

Annie Leibovitz: a Photographer's Life, 1990 - 2005

National Portrait Gallery
Through 1 February 2009

After touring the USA, Leibovitz's exhibit arrives in London. It starts, puzzlingly, with images of US Olympic athletes, some of them quite Riefenstahlian, such as the diver frozen against the sky. Then it moves on to some celebrities and landscapes. And isn't that Susan Sontag?

What does this jumble mean? Well, the answer lies very much at the end, in the room given over to her proofs. While leafing through her work in 2005, she realised she'd separated it into commercial and personal. It was then that she decided to fuse the two into one exhibit, the personal and profession merged to illustrate her one life. Interesting.

Why in 2005? As documented in her photos, death had recently claimed her father and her partner Susan Sontag, while Leibovitz had recently become a mother. Clearly, some reflection was in order and assembling a book and exhibit was part of the photographer's grieving process.

And so this mess of an exhibit begins to make some sense, because it is difficult to understand otherwise why one would want to juxtapose shots of Scarlett Johansson pouting with shots of Sontag being treated in hospital. In truth, an exhibit of the personal photos would have been much more enlightening. But perhaps not so marketable.

The shots of Sontag, the kids and Leibovitz's parents, especially the ones in 35mm black and white, are intimate, personal and powerful. By contrast, the Vanity Fair covers and other assignments are glossy, colour, large format, and ultimately hollow.

Leibovitz herself comments that she doesn't consider herself a great studio photographer and yet this is what she's become known for: the big Hollywood assemblages with armies of assistants--more Cecil B Demille productions than portraits. So, why pursue that line? Surely, at this stage, she can't need the money or the kudos. [2009 edit: Ah, but maybe she does.]

It's also troubling to note that it's only after Sontag's death that Leibovitz feels able to acknowledge their relationship. In photo after photo, whether in Jordan, Paris or New York, Sontag appears, mostly not named but quite visible. And the shots of her sprawled on couches or in bed, draped in rumpled sheets, speak volumes about the intimacy between them.

But in life? Never a mention, except as the "close friend". The saddest photo in this collection is the one that's missing: the one of Sontag and Leibovitz together.

Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2008

Photographers Gallery, London
Through 6 April

The DB Prize always throws up an interesting array of photographers, some traditionally journalistic in approach, some more experimental and I frequently wonder: a) how they are selected for the shortlist and b) how the winner is chosen.

This year's crop, all male, are: John Davies (UK), Fazal Sheikh (USA), Jacob Holdt (Denmark) and Esko Mannikko (Finland).

Davies, separate from the others in the Cafe, takes large format black and white shots, documenting the changing face of Britain's landscape. Many of his shots are of the north of England, with its complex relationship to the Industrial Revolution. It is a fruitful exercise, but I found his shots a bit dull.

Mannikko has his own quirky world, and his entry is drawn from several exhibits, giving it an un-unified feel. Close-up shots of animals' faces sit side-by-side (and indeed are jammed in together, at his behest) with shots of weathered wooden doors, these being two of his interests but not intended for one exhibit. So. An interesting character but again not really my bag.

Holdt's work I found extremely problematic. For a long time he lived a nomadic existence, hitch-hiking across the USA in the 1970s and frequently, it appears from his captions, shacking up with all and sundry as he did so. His interest is in the marginal in society: drag queens, prostitutes, poor black Southerners, drug addicts.

But his approach I find extremely exploitative. He frequently refers to his "friends", as well as various girlfriends, in his captions to the photos. Really? Did his "friends" know he was going to publish his work and benefit from their poverty and degradation? Did they really want everyone to know they were street-walking or taking illegal drugs? It truly smacks of the worst kind of smug colonialism: the European artist sweeping in to decry the lives of the poor, suffering natives.

The work I did find impressive and moving was the series by Sheikh, about continuing discrimination against women in India. He approaches the project as an outsider but his portraits (taken with consent) are both dignified and dramatic. There is also considerable context given in the accompanying text.

Some of these women have suffered extreme abuse: set on fire by their husbands, abandoned by their families, trafficked into prostitution. But they want to tell their stories and his work is helping to raise awareness of the consequences of the cultural preference for male children.

LFF: Brand Upon the Brain / Black, White and Gray

Though I've never met Guy Maddin, I think it's safe to say he has issues. This view is formed not only from Brand Upon the Brain, his latest work, but also my attendance at his birthday party at this year's Berlinale. This was a very public event hosted by Cheap, at which Marie Losier premiered Manuelle Labour, a faux silent featuring her giving birth to Guy Maddin's hands, the result, she explained, of her wanting to do a portrait of him.

If this wasn't startling enough, Maddin was as surprised as any of the onlookers when he was presented with a cake and forced to exorcise the painful childhood memory of being terrorised by a monkey at a birthday party. This was accomplished via a series of silent film titles, filmmakers dressed as monkeys and, back in the Cheap Gossip studio, a quick number on a piano--Marlene Dietrich's piano, no less, specially wheeled in for the occasion from the adjacent Film Museum. The cake was then smashed on the floor.

At the Berlinale, Brand Upon the Brain was given a gala staging with musicians and live voiceover by Isabella Rossellini. At the LFF it is playing as a standard film, but is still enormously inventive, witty, beautifully executed and clearly the product of a delightfully twisted mind.

A man, called Guy Maddin, returns to his childhood home on an island, after an absence of 30 years, summoned by his mother to give the lighthouse two coats of paint. Most people's memories of childhood are charged enough, but poor Guy has quite a lot of baggage to unearth, as his memories emerge over 12 chapters. His mother ran an orphanage while his father carried out mysterious experiments in the lab. When teen sleuth Wendy Hale arrives on the island, all kinds of passions are unleashed, all under his mother's omnipotent gaze, equipped with the lighthouse searchlight and the aerophone, which she uses to keep tabs on eager-to-please Guy and his sister.

Mother and son have an unsettlingly close relationship and all kinds of dynamics within the family are hinted at. Guy and his sister Sis end up vying for the attentions of Wendy, who disguises herself as her brother Chance and confuses everyone. So, in the midst of a lot of sci-fi hokum and family melodrama, a very sweet lesbian romance unfolds, leaving Guy on the sidelines.

All of this is accomplished in Maddin's signature faux-silent style, with voiceover, intertitles, asynchronous sound, no dialogue and vignetted black and white photography.

Much black and white photography is on display in Black White and Gray (dir James Crump), a documentary on the life of New York art curator/collector Sam Wagstaff, a powerful figure in the 1970s who is almost forgotten now, unlike his protégé and lover Robert Mapplethorpe. It was Wagstaff, 25 years older, who promoted Mapplethorpe and drove up prices for his work. Wagstaff also left much of his enormous wealth to Mapplethorpe, who profited greatly from the relationship.

In fact, there are those in the film who suggest Wagstaff was nothing more than a convenient sugar daddy for Mapplethorpe. By contrast, Patti Smith, who lived with Mapplethorpe when he met Wagstaff, insists that the photographer loved Wagstaff and she paints a picture of a threesome who all got along, despite the differences in their backgrounds and outlooks. Wagstaff came from a privileged Ivy League background, whereas Mapplethorpe was more rough around the edges.

As a curator, Wagstaff favoured modern art and hated photography until he had a change of heart and pursued his interest in voracious style. It is suggested that he was a collector of people as well as art. And so the two formed an alliance that lasted until their deaths from AIDS in the late 80s, during which time Wagstaff changed from a Brooks Brothers suit-wearing establishment figure to a leather-jacket wearing habitué of the meat-packing district.

The doc features work by artists favoured by Wagstaff, such as Tony Smith and Mapplethorpe, as well as interviews with various art world figures from New York and London and a few archive clips of Mapplethorpe and Wagstaff. Wagstaff's photography collection is now owned by the Getty Museum.

The Art of Lee Miller

V & A
London
Until 6 January 2008

Model, photographer, journalist, adventurer. Lee Miller's centenary is being celebrated in this exhibit at the V & A, continuing her belated recognition. The art is featured here, not the extraordinary life that began in oh-so-homely Poughkeepsie, New York (amazing anyone of achievement came from there) and ended in England 30 years ago.

In between, Miller became a Surrealist in Paris, then a war photographer and writer. She ended up doing features for British Vogue, coming full circle, having started as a model in American Vogue.

What comes through sharply in the exhibit is Miller's dissatisfaction with being a Thing, albeit a Beautiful one. She was clearly a woman of action, which must have been quite difficult in that era. The portraits of her as a young woman, by a range of male photographers, including her father, show a bestilled glacial beauty. She looks trapped and bored.

The most extraordinary photo of her is the earliest, a full-length shot from 1915, when she was eight. She appears as a handsome young boy with a crewcut, overalls and her hand clutching a post. Lips pursed, eyes veiled by shadows, she appears grave and solemn, but with a direct gaze. Given that she was raped at age 7, it is poignant indeed.

That she went on to become a model and a great beauty is an irony--always an object of someone else's gaze. She must have been keen to rebel against this fate, and at age 22 headed for Paris where some of her best work was done. Her nudes show a delicate sensuality and her eye for detail makes pictures of chairs and ironwork into works of art, unrecognisable as common-place objects. With Man Ray she developed solarisation, a technique which adds a magical quality to such portraits as that of Unknown Woman, 1930.

The exhibit includes a few drawings from this period, eye-opening depictions of a woman's head under a bell jar and another being pinned to a wall by daggers. Proto-feminist statements? Well, how about her Untitled [severed breast from mastectomy], which, far from being set in some medical scenario, is depicted on a dinner plate, complete with service? Surely, this is a woman with a critique of her surroundings.

Later, she worked in New York and then returned to Europe, turning her eye to photojournalism in London and in France during the Second World War. These pictures serve a different purpose, documenting the horrors of war, lest anyone deny or forget what happened.

She also became a war correspondent for Vogue New York, and her diatribe against the Germans she met accompanying the invading troops in 1945 makes for uncomfortable reading, especially as the layout contrasts the well-fed children of Germany with the murdered Holocaust victims. Miller's anger is palpable. Other work during this period includes a shot of her towering over Pablo Picasso in his studio in liberated Paris, the statuesque Miller, looking tired in her uniform, linking arms with a gleeful Picasso.

The pictures in Hitler's apartment in Munich seem quite off-colour, staged shots of her in his bathtub and a soldier reading Mein Kampf. What are they meant to depict? The banality of evil? If anything they seem disrespectful to the thousands of his victims, cocking a snook at a deposed dictator by turning his lair into a joke.

Curiously, Miller's work tails off after the war, just when she should have been at the peak of her powers and a double threat as photographer and writer. There is only a photo essay on Working Guests at her Sussex farmhouse from 1953 and then nothing, though she lived until 1977.

What happened? Did she retire? Did the work dry up? It seems sad that this cut-off seems to have coincided with her 50th birthday. Was the great beauty considered past her sell-by date? It is disappointing that after a life of action, she ended up becalmed.