UK Edition
Making mischief: celebrating Norman Parkinson’s playful take on fashion photography
Described as "a bit flash" by his rival Cecil Beaton, the British photographer Norman Parkinson - or 'Parks', as he was known to the staff at Vogue - was never shy or retiring. His eccentric personal style, including a last-days-of-the-empire moustache and a Victorian smoking cap, was made all the more striking by the fact that he was 6ft 5in.
His contribution to photography - Jerry Hall and Grace Coddington were among the models his work helped catapult to stardom - will be celebrated at this month's Photo London, where Iconic Images, which took on his 500,000-negative-strong archive earlier this year, will present 60 pictures, about two thirds of which are unseen.
His secret ingredient, says Iconic's CEO, Robin Morgan, "was his playful nature. He had a mischievous eye. A lot of the work we are discovering is very provocative for its day. I think he was trying to push his editors - to tease them, almost."
Parkinson, who kept working until the very end, dying of a cerebral haemorrhage while on assignment in 1990, said he wanted his obituary to read, "He took photography out of the embalming trade, and for a time, the open shutter of his camera was a window to the shimmer of a vanishing England." It would be churlish to disagree.
Iconic Images will present works from The Norman Parkinson Archive at Photo London, Somerset House, 17-20 May; photolondon.org