No slave of the ordinary

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

Words to live by! Indeed, Cecil Beaton was certainly no "slave of the ordinary". From the Sitwells to the Jaggers, from Hollywood royalty to the late HM the Queen, from Garbo to Monroe, from Coward to Capote, from Lord Mountbatten to Tallulah Bankhead, he knew (and photographed) them all.

Cecil Beaton's first love, of course, was... Cecil Beaton - and no doubt he would have loved the fact that the first major exhibition mounted by the National Portrait Gallery in the heart of London since re-opening after a major refurb was a tribute to him, his work, and his life! And so it was that Hils, Crog, John-John, Bence, Madam Arcati and I went to see it today.

It was delightful - everything from his "Bright Young Things" era, through Vogue fashion shoots, the War, Hollywood and semi-respectable old age was on show. Here's a mere soupçon...

I was drooling over the sheer camp decadence and magnificence of it all...

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is on at the National Portrait Gallery until 11th January 2026 - catch it if you can!

[clcik any pic to embiggen]

Quote of the day

Dame Elton John, discussing his new exhibition of his photography collection in The Guardian:

One surprise in The Radical Eye show is the framing of the images, which is, well, a bit bling – gold and silver gilt rather than, as he puts it, “boring bloody black”. That will, I say, almost certainly annoy the purists. “Oh, they can fuck off,” he says. “All I am saying is, look at them in a different way – as magnificent works of art that should be magnificently framed.”

"A Forgotten Model" by George Platt-Lynes

Indeed.

The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the collection of Sir Elton John is on at Tate Modern until 7th May 2017.

Radiate...

Just got in after a day of hauling my arse (so to speak) to either end of London. Today I had a meeting in Wembley (north-west London, in the shadow of the very impressive National Stadium), which, thanks to the usual mayhem of technical problems on the Tube in cold weather and the rush hour took me two hours to get to - even though, as the crow flies, it's probably no more than six miles from Dolores Delargo Towers...

So, having spent all day in that bleak wilderness - and as Wembley's on a Tube line that would actually take me into town with one quick change - I thought I'd cheer myself up and finally get to see the Chris Stein photo exhibition Negative: Me, Blondie, and The Advent of Punk at Somerset House on the Thames before it closes on Sunday (last-minute, moi?), which was excellent. Of course.

As I am now in a suitably "Blondie-fied" mood, here's a rather natty little video tribute to Miss Debbie Harry that someone has put together, with the highly appropriate, and still haunting even after all these years, Fade Away And Radiate:

Blondie - Fade Away and Radiate

Read my feature on the Chris Stein/Blondie exhibition at The Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp.

Thought for the Day

"Hallo, Rabbit," said Pooh, "is that you?"
"Let's pretend it isn't," said Rabbit, "and see what happens."



Indeed.

The look for today

I don't want to be respectable

"I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diners Club."
Gore Vidal

A selection of photographs by Hedi Slimane of the great writer, orator, political pundit and wit Gore Vidal has been published.

















I have the deepest admiration for this man, and have written about him before - here and here.

These photos are stunning, and thanks to the lovely people over at The Pandorian for alerting me to them...

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity

I am salivating about the forthcoming exhibition of photos as featured in the gloriously camp Vanity Fair magazine.

On display at the National Portrait Gallery from 14 February 2008, the exhibition promises a spectacular display of pics by some of the most renowned photographers of the twentieth century, including Baron De Meyer, Edward Steichen, Man Ray and Cecil Beaton, as well as portraits by celebrated contemporary photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts.

Sumptuous!

Read more about the exhibition

Photos of the year

Reuters has posted its selection of photos of the year, and they are fab!







See the whole selection