National Portrait Gallery displays rarely seen photo of the Beatles

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National Portrait Gallery Displays Rarely Seen Photos of the Beatles and Jude Law in VOGUE 100 Exhibit, Beginning Today
By Visual Arts News Desk
February 11  2016

Rarely seen photographs of the Beatles and Jude Law will go on view at the National Portrait Gallery as part of its exhibition Vogue 100: A Century of Style (11 February - 22 May 2016), today 11 February.



Prior to their loan to the Gallery, the two photographs have not been displayed in public since they were taken. The Beatles portrait has remained unpublished in Vogue's archives until now and the Jude Law image was published in British Vogue in 1996, but has not since been shown in a gallery or museum.



Albert Watson photographed the then 23 year old Jude Law, along with other British actors and directors, at a studio in London for the March 1996 edition of British Vogue. The 20-page special, 'Vogue's film star salute: celebrating 100 years of British film', was a tribute to British cinema and featured new photographic portraits of eminent 1990s British actors, directors, scriptwriters and producers.

Diana Vreeland at American Vogue commissioned the Beatles portrait by the young British Vogue staff photographer Peter Laurie in 1964. The idea was suggested to Vreeland by her British assistant art director, Nicholas Haslam, who was dispatched to Northampton to have them photographed after a concert. Scheduled also for publication in British Vogue, the moment came and went, and the portrait lay unpublished in the magazine's archives.

The photographs will be displayed alongside the many faces that have shaped the cultural landscape of the twentieth century, from Henri Matisse to Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst; Marlene Dietrich to Gwyneth Paltrow; Lady Diana Cooper to Lady Diana Spencer; and Fred Astaire to David Beckham.

Other highlights of the exhibition include the entire set of prints from Corinne Day's controversial Kate Moss underwear shoot, taken in 1993 at the pinnacle of the 'grunge' trend; Peter Lindbergh's famous 1990 cover shot that defined the supermodel era; a series of exceptional Second World War photographs by Vogue's official war correspondent, Lee Miller; a rare version of Horst's famous 'corset' photograph from 1939, which inspired the video for Madonna's hit song Vogue; and vintage prints by the first professional fashion photographer, Baron de Meyer.