Rock: A Retrospective of Jane Bown's Rock and Pop Portraits (1963 - 2003)
A Retrospective Of Jane Bown’s Music Portraits 1963 – 2005
The Lowry
2 July – 18 September 2005
“The best pictures are uninvited. They’re suddenly there in front of you. But they are there one minute and gone the next…It’s quite easy to take a photograph – but difficult to get the shot” – Jane Bown
Jane Bown, one of the UK’s most respected and influential portrait photographers, is to have a special retrospective exhibition at The Lowry.
Bown’s reputation as a unique photographer begins as far back as 1949 when her first picture was published in The Observer when she was just 21 years old. The picture, of philosopher Bertrand Russell, became the first of thousands of revealing images captured by Jane’s camera of the world’s most influential statesmen, artists, academics and celebrities. However The Lowry exhibition, entitled Rock, will focus on five decades of Jane’s celebrated rock and pop portraiture - beginning in 1963 with iconic shots of The Beatles - through to the present day with a specially commissioned portrait of Manchester’s Doves.
Also featured are dramatic and atmospheric shots of some of rock’s biggest stars including Cher, Bjork, Tom Jones, Pete Townsend, Sinead O’Connor, Keith Richards, David Bowie, Sting, Joan Baez and Boy George. The show will also include a very rare portrait of John Lennon from 1967 and an image of a young U2 taken in 1987 – when it is rumoured that Bono insisted that he would cancel a prestigious newspaper interview unless Jane did the photography.
Despite Jane’s legendary ‘amateur’ approach – rarely shooting with anything other than natural light with and with her camera almost permanently set at f2.8 and 1/60th of second – her work is instantly recognisable for its penetrating style and her ability to capture the essence of her subject’s personality in just one or two shots.
In 1980 she was honored with one of the first photography exhibitions ever held at the National Portrait Gallery in 1980 and was awarded an MBE in 1985. This was followed bya CBE in 1995 for her outstanding contribution to photography. When receiving her MBE it is also reported that when The Queen asked what she did for a living, Bown, in characteristically modest style, simply replied “I’m a hack”.
Such a down to earth approach throughout her career gives us some clues as to how she manages to capture images that uncannily reflect the personality and humanity of her subjects - or in the words of one of her editors:
“Jane must be a bit of a white witch, she really can see into people’s souls.”
In her long career Jane has exhibited all over the world and has published a number of books including Observer, The Gentle Eye, Men Of Consequence, The Singular Cat, Pillars Of The Church, Women Of Consequence and Faces. Rock has been curated by The Newsroom – The Guardian and Observer’s Archive and Visitor Centre in London.
A large format catalogue accompanies the exhibition available from The Lowry.
Posted on Tuesday, 14 June 2005 under Press Galleries Press