Tor Hildyard, June 1974. Assistant to Adrian Flowers. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
I first came to hear about Adrian when I was on holiday in Corfu in 1974. A friend of Kathy Vibert, who worked for Adrian, was also staying in the cottage and mentioned that Adrian was looking for another assistant.
When I got back from holiday, Kathy contacted me and asked if I would like to come for an interview. I had never been to a job interview before, let alone worked in photography and had only used a Zenit EM, but I was keen to learn and along I went to his studio in Tite Street. Adrian was sitting on his old leather sofa in the reception room and began to question me on why I wanted to work for him, I think by the end, he only offered me the job because I had the right birth sign, Aquarius and was taller than his first assistant, Steve Garforth, so could reach things he couldn’t.
When I started working at Tite Street, Gala was the PA [see https://adrianflowersarchive.com/gala/]; later to be replaced by Issi Thomas. Steve Garforth the first assistant, [see https://adrianflowersarchive.com/steve-garforth/], Terry was the technician and film developer and Sigi was his agent. There was also the lovely Petrona, who kept the studio looking spick and span and fed us delicious West African food for a Christmas treat. I was paid the vast some of £10.00 a week, which I thought was a fortune and was catapulted into the world of advertising and long days.
Issi Thomas, June 1974. Assistant to Adrian Flowers. Photograph by Adrian FlowersPetrona George, June 1974. Assistant and friend to Adrian Flowers for 25 years at his studio in Tite Street. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
It wasn’t long before I was promoted to help Terry develop the film, first by hand and then using the Adrian’s new toy, the Kalenta. This machine was able to develop all that day’s shoot in one go and no more fumes to inhale. Magic. Until the 3-day week! Then disaster struck. With no warning at all, all the power was switched off and we were plunged into darkness, sometimes for hours. If this happened during the development of the film, all the chemicals poured in at once, immediately ruining the days shoot. So, to get over this, Adrian had to shoot twice as much, for back up. When I first started working at the studio, I didn’t drive, but that was soon sorted. Adrian used to teach me to drive round and round the inside roads of Battersea Park in his treasured Alvis. Nothing like jumping in the deep end!!
1975 International Alvis Day, Knebworth. Assistant Ashok Koshy in the foreground. Tor Hildyard and Steve Garforth standing behind.
In the time I worked for Adrian, I helped on many campaigns. The most memorable ones were for Silk Cut, John Players Special and the Wool Marketing Board, where he had sheep brought to the studio and photographed on coloured backgrounds. This wasn’t a great success, so Adrian, Steve and I moved down to Dorset and photographed them in a freezing cold barn, but the sheep were happier and we kept warm by drinking large quantities of Whiskey Mac! As it was early spring, the wool was beginning to fall off, so it was my job to sew it back on.
Some of the sheep photographed for the Wool Marketing Board advertisement. June 1974. Photographs by Adrian Flowers
For the Silk Cut adds, we consumed lots of Irish Coffees before Adrian got the perfect swirl, when poured into the cup.
And then there was John Players Special, for one ad, I was asked by the Art Director to stand in for the model. I was photographed in bed and Sigi was in a phone box, smoking a cigarette. I remember we took the pic of Sigi in the phone box, early in the morning on the Embankment and then the rest of the day working with the model in the studio. I can’t remember the name of the art director, but when the model left, he asked me to model instead. Steve wasn’t that happy that I had no top on, but we went ahead. I remember I was paid £10.00 for half an hour’s work, which I thought was a fortune. Sadly, it was rejected for the ad, as apparently it was too sexy!!
Also, for JPS, we went to a house down the Kings Road and had to sign a secrecy clause, as hidden away in a garage was the new prototype of the new JPS racing car. All very exciting.
In addition to working on adverts, Adrian worked for the Observer magazine. This was such interesting and unusual work, from portraits of people like Len Deighton and Clive James, as well as spending many weeks driving round the country looking for the different religions and their churches. We went to a Mosque in Woking, a Jewish scribe in Hackney and a Bar Mitzvah in North London. Also, we found a Buddhist temple on the top floor of a house in Ecclestone Square.
Madame Tussauds article for the Observer, 25.2.75 Photograph by Adrian Flowers
I loved working for Adrian, we were like one big family, and the fact that so many of us kept in touch all our lives, just shows what a special man he was.
Dated 1954, a contact sheet in the Adrian Flowers Archive shows both the interior and exterior of Chiquito, a coffee bar and café on Hanway Street, off Tottenham Court Road. There are several photographs of the café exterior, taken at night, with crowds gathered on the pavement. In one, the rear wing of a parked Alvis reflects the photographer’s lights. Most of the photographs were taken inside the coffee bar and show people sitting at tables. However, one shot, taken from above, shows a crowd gathered around the bar where a young man operates a Victoria Arduno coffee machine. The event was a publicity bash to celebrate the arrival of coffee machines in London and the rise of the coffee bar. Although the Bar Italia, founded in 1949, had an espresso machine, it was not until four years later that the media spotlight shone on London’s coffee bars, when Gina Lollabrigida opened Pino Riservato’s Moka bar at 11 Frith Street. The agent for Gaggia in the UK, Riservato then opened a second bar, Moka-Ris on Dean Street, which had a machine installed by 1953, as did the rapidly proliferating bars such as El Cubano in Knightsbridge, and the “2i’s” on Old Compton Street, where Tommy Steele and other young musicians made their name.
Cafe Cabana on Princes Street, London
In Adrian’s photographs, on the bar at Chiquito can be seen jugs of hot milk, and small espresso cups and saucers. Unlike other coffee bars that sported Picassoesque ceramics by William Newland, Margaret Hine and Nicholas Vergette, the interior of Chiquito was inexpensively decorated with plants in terracotta pots, brightly patterned fabric and shiplap cladding, while a sign read ‘Café espresso – open till midnight’.
Interior of the Mocamba coffee bar in Brompton Road
In one photo, Angela, dressed in dark slacks, is seated at the bar and turning to look out onto the street—very much a ‘cool cat’ of 50’s Soho. The photograph is taken from outside the plate glass door, looking in to the brightly-lit interior.
Angela Flowers at Cafe Cabana 1954. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
The coffee bar phenomenon in London and other British cities attracted a huge amount of media attention, and in August 1955, Picture Post ran a feature “A Red-head in Search of Black Coffee” in which the actor Adrienne Corri, promoting her film Make Me an Offer, visited coffee bars in London, including the Moulin Rouge. It may have been during this tour that Adrian photographed Corri and Angela Flowers together.
Angela Flowers and Adrienne Corri at Moka-Ris coffee bar (on Dean Street) 1954. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
The building at 32 Hanway Street, where Chiquito flourished in the 1950’s, has a long history. Developed in 1819 by a painter and glazier named William Watson, in the late nineteenth century it was for several months the home of the Irish-American artist William Harnett, who was born in Clonakilty, Co. Cork, in 1848. In 1879 Harnett, by then a celebrated still-life painter, was in London, living in Hanway Street. In the twentieth century, No 32 became the Dickens Chop House, and around 1955 it was transformed into the Chiquito coffee bar, one of several Mediterranean-styled cafes set up on Hanway Street. In 1957 Chiquito was licensed for ‘two guitar players and no dancing’, and had a ‘skiffle singing room’ in the basement. In 1959 the café featured in Expresso Bongo, the film that first introduced Cliff Richard to a wide audience.
Moulin Rouge on Hanway Street, London
Ironically, by the time the film was released, Cafe Chiquito’s heyday as a ‘cool cats’ café was over, and the introduction of a striptease act the following year spelled the end of what had been a teen institution. Hanway Street became synonymous with sleaze, with a resident opposing the renewal of licenses to the cafes, on the grounds of ‘nuisances of various sorts ranging from simple urination to sexual intercourse in the doorways’.
Adrian Flowers with Zoltán Glass at Artist Partners in Dover St, London
In the mid-1950s, at the outset of his career and following the lead of his mentor Zoltán Glass, Adrian Flowers joined Artists Partners. An enterprise bringing together illustrators, graphic artists and photographers, Artists Partners was founded in 1950 by John Barker and G. Donovan Candler. Barker was a talented graphic artist who designed textiles for the Festival of Britain, while Candler had worked as an agent with an advertising company.
Aubrey Rix 1954. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
Other founding members included Betty Luton White, Reginald Mount (1906-1979) and Aubrey Rix, the latter designing many quintessential illustrations for Women’s Own. AP grew rapidly into a networking organisation for both artists and clients in London. Every Friday, a drinks party was held, initially at the AP headquarters at Lower John Street in Soho, and later at their more palatial offices in Dover Street, Mayfair. At these gatherings, creative talents and potential clients could get together to discuss projects and ideas. There was plenty of space at Dover Street, and several artists rented studio space there, including Adrian Flowers. He was commissioned by artists to take photographs as source material for illustrations, and also took on advertising work sent his way by Zoltán Glass.
Within three years, the number of participating artists at AP had reached fifty, among them Tom Eckersley, André François, Hans Unger and Heinz Kurth. Fashion artists such as Alistair Michie and Beryl Hartland were also represented, along with jazz trumpeter and artist Peter Allingham Henville (1925-2000). Several artists, particularly Reg Mount and Eileen Evans, had already established reputations during the war years, designing posters and leaflets. Mount’s work at AP included a poster for the 1955 film The Ladykillers, while Saul Bass designed the poster for Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In some ways Aubrey Rix became a victim of his own success, not least when his designs published in Letraset transfer sheets allowed his work to be used free of copyright. Tom Eckersley’s posters for Omo, Eno’s Salts and Guinness are advertising classics of their time.
Brian Sanders 1954. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
Brian Sanders, who took over from Duffy as assistant to Adrian Flowers, had a studio at Dover Street, where he designed posters for films, including Oh! What a Lovely War, and also created photography sets for Adrian. Emulating the style of the Surrealist artist Rene Magritte, John Holmes designed the cover of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. Patrick Tilley, better-known now as a science fiction novelist and scriptwriter, was commissioned by BBDO to design covers for the Sunday Times magazines. Tilley also worked for Shell, and for the “Drinkapintamilkaday” campaign. Born in Essex in 1928, he had studied art at Durham. In 1955 he moved to London and established himself as a graphic artist. Several years later he began writing part-time, and in 1968 gave up design to work as a scriptwriter and novelist: his Fade-Out was published in 1974. In 1969, another AP artist, Peter le Vasseur, was commissioned by David Puttnam to create designs for The Sunday Times entitled ‘the History of Cinema’.
Artist Partners drinks party, with Adrian and Angela Flowers
As Britain emerged from years of austerity and food rationing, much of the work of AP artists during the 1950’s was in advertising, and artists Susan Einzig, Harry Hants, Ken Wynn and Ben Ostrick worked on projects ranging from small drawings for the Radio Times to elaborate poster campaigns. In addition to posters and other design work, Sam Peffer, who had studied at Hornsey School of Art, designed covers for Pan paperback novels. The 1951 Festival of Britain provided a showcase for the talents of many AP members. However the golden age of art illustration was fading, and when editors found they could commission a photograph for twenty-five pounds, they baulked at spending three times that amount on commissioning original artwork. By the early 1970’s, the world of art illustration had all but collapsed.
Nevertheless AP moved with the times, and in the early 1960s the company expanded, taking on the cartoonist Jak, the figurative artist Michael Leonard, and designers including Saul Bass, George Him, Herbert Leupin, Savignac, Feliks Topolski and Ruth Freeman. Photography, rapidly growing in importance in the world of advertising, also became a mainstay. In the Adrian Flowers Archive there are many portraits of AP members, taken around 1956. In October of that year, Adrian also took a series of photographs of the offices at Dover Street. His photographs give an insight into the day-to-day work at the company. In one image, pinned to a large noticeboard, can be seen a selection of portrait shots, photos of children and pets. A sequence of photographs shows a musical troupe preparing for a photo shoot. A tall step ladder had been set up, to enable photographs to be taken from above. The performers included a harpist, minstrel and a trumpet player, with trousers patched. Introducing the performers was a circus girl wearing sequined jacket and plumed headdress. In the background, a tuba player and guitarist made up the troupe. Dressed in a mantilla, a flamenco dancer stood at a window, looking down at the performers below, the whole ensemble a homage to Picasso’s ‘saltimbanques’. Adrian’s photos give an insight into behind the scenes; his lighting set-up included tall tripod luminaires with mirrored reflectors.
In one of Adrian’s photographs of the AP offices in Dover Street can be seen a framed page from Advertisers Weekly, entitled “Photography in Advertising”. Voted photograph of the month and winner of the Layton Award, Adrian’s photograph, featuring sugar tongs holding an ice cube above a glass, was subtitled ‘a picture that went better without a hand’. Taken for Monsanto Chemicals, it is linked to another of Adrian’s images, one that features a bouncing drip of water. He took on work sent his way by Zoltán Glass, including photographing the film star Robert Beatty, for Brylcreem. A photograph taken in 1956 shows Adrian, looking relaxed, reading a copy of the Manchester Guardian. On the front cover is a report on the Suez Crisis. [AF 2168] Adrian photographed diverse subjects, including a Victorian coach and horses in the street. Sandeman Port acquired a new logo, courtesy of Adrian’s photography. He also won a competition to advertise Australian canned fruit, and took pictures for the fashion pages of the Observer and Flair magazine. Although Adrian continued working with Artists Partners, in 1959 he moved to his own studio in Tite Street, Chelsea, where he was to remain for thirty years. During this period he continued exploring and experimenting, with the help of up to five assistants. There were in-house facilities at Tite Street for colour and black-and-white printing, while large sets were built in hired studios.
Robert Beatty 1954. Photograph by Adrian Flowers for Brylcreem
Artists Partners continued to flourish through the 1970’s and ‘80’s. Adrian’s old friend Len Deighton joined in 1969, as did the photographer Duffy, who had trained in Adrian’s studio. One of the most talented artists to join was Brian Sanders, whose illustrations have come to define the visual language of the 1960’s. Having started his career as assistant to Adrian, in the 1970’s Sanders was commissioned by Stanley Kubrick to make a visual record of the filming of 2001 A Space Odyssey. And some four decades later was commissioned to create a new body of work for the television series Mad Men. When Colmer Artists Agency ceased trading, several of their artists, including Virgil Pomfret, moved to AP. Some members, such as Barry Driscoll and Tom Adams, continued to work from their own studios. Christine Isteed took over front desk responsibilities at AP, while Don Candler’s sons Christopher and Tommy took turns managing the company, before Dom Rodi took over. Today, Artists Partners has Christine Isteed at the helm, serving as chairman and managing director.
Tall, good-looking, talented and personable, when new RAF recruit Cyril Ewart Lionel Grant arrived in Britain from the West Indies in 1942, he was welcomed as a hero. Commissioned as a Flight Lieutenant, Grant trained as a navigator and flew in Lancaster bombers. However, a decade later, in spite of becoming a qualified barrister, Grant found himself in an England where attitudes to race had hardened. He spent his life contesting such negative attitudes, and achieved a significant success in promoting a multi-cultural Britain, through his writing, acting and organisational skills. Like the painter Frank Bowling, ‘Cy’ Grant (1919-2010) was born and raised in Guyana, (then known as British Guiana) and grew up near the Demerera river, and later in the town of New Amsterdam. Beterveragting, his home town, is notable for having been purchased in the 1830’s by a co-operative of former slaves, and Grant himself, one of a family of seven, was the great-grandson of a slave. However, he was born into a middle-class family and had a good education, albeit learning mostly about English history and little about the Caribbean. He inherited a love of music from his mother, a music teacher, while his father, a Moravian minister, introduced him to literature, emphasising to his son that some famous European authors such as Alexander Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas were black. Grant worked for a time for a magistrate in Guyana, gaining experience in legal affairs, but his family could not afford to send him abroad to study law.
During WWII, along with hundreds of other men and women in the West Indies, Grant was recruited by the British armed forces and took ship to England. Commissioned as a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF, he was navigator on a Lancaster bomber of 103 Squadron based at Elsham Wolds, near Grimsby in Lincolnshire. In 1943, after being shot down over the Netherlands, he spent two years in a prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III, where he made good use of his enforced captivity, studying and writing poetry. A photograph of him taken by the Germans during this period was titled ‘a member of the RAF of indeterminate race’—a phrase that would later become the title of his autobiography. Although he qualified as a barrister in 1950, specialising in anti-racism cases, Grant found that he was discriminated against because of his skin colour and West Indian origins. For a time he persevered with his studies, availing of a three year scholarship under the Colonial Scheme for Further Education and Vocational Training, and to improve his diction joined an amateur theatre group, where he discovered he had a talent for acting. In time, however, Grant abandoned his hopes of becoming a barrister, finding he could earn a much better living as a singer and actor. He featured on entertainment shows on radio and television, including Cliff Mitchelmore’s Tonight programme, where he sang, in an engaging calypso style, ditties penned by Bernard Levin, such as
Heartache today for the deb’s delight, no more of those glamorous nights; So shed a tear for the deb of the year, who lost her vocation in mid-career.
He stayed with the Tonight programme for several years, but left when he felt that he was being patronised and typecast by Mitchelmore.
Cy Grant, Angela Flowers and Dorit Grant, 20th November 1954. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
During these years Adrian Flowers photographed Cy Grant on several occasions. The earliest photographs were taken on 20th November 1954 (Job no. 1367), taken on black and white 120mm film. They are portrait shots, mainly head and shoulders, although in some of these images, Grant is playing the guitar. On 21st June 1955 (Job. no. 1625), Flowers photographed Grant at a social event, probably a small party held at Cy and his wife Dorit’s house in Highgate.
Dorit and Cy Grant at Angela Flowers birthday event (Angela on r/h side of frame) December 1955 Photograph by Adrian Flowers
Later that year, on 19thDecember (Job No. 1397, 1955) at a supper party held to celebrate Angela Flowers’ 23rd birthday, a group of friends including Cy and Dorit, Heinz Kurth and the poet Jon Silkin gathered at the Flowers’s flat in England’s Lane. Aged nineteen, Dinah Holland, younger sister of Angela, also attended the party, which was informal, with guests sitting on the floor around a tablecloth spread out picnic-style.
Centre: Dinah Holland, Angela Flowers’ sister. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
In one photo, Angela is filling a glass and handing it to Silkin, while in another Grant plays the guitar. Bottles of wine and a Greek vase on the tablecloth lent a Mediterranean flavour to the party. Dorit was expecting her first child at this time and in June 1956 (Job no. 2017), Flowers photographed her and her infant daughter Dana.
Cy & Dorit Grant with their daughter Dana, June 1956 Photograph by Adrian Flowers
In October of that year (Job no 2188), in what appears to be an improvised recording studio in the England’s Lane flat, Flowers photographed Grant playing the guitar and singing into a microphone. Not long afterwards, when Adrian and Angela had moved to a new flat in Grange Road, Highgate, they held a small party, with Cy and Dorit present. Angela had given birth to her second son Matthew a few days earlier, so the event was probably to celebrate the new arrival. (Job No. 2258)
That same year, 1956, Cy Grant became the first black person to host his own British television programme, For Members Only, and the following year, in Sea Wife, a film set in the Pacific during WWII, he played the role of a ship’s purser who, along with three passengers, is stranded in a life raft after their ship is sunk by a Japanese submarine. Although a romance, featuring also Richard Burton and Joan Collins, Sea Wife is unsentimental in its depiction of colonial attitudes. Grant saves the lives of his companions, but is persecuted by the fourth occupant of the liferaft, a deranged white Englishman, and, in a shocking scene, is abandoned in a lagoon where he is killed by a shark. In playing the role of ship’s purser, Grant hoped to improve attitudes in Britain towards immigrants from the West Indies. In another film, The Man from the Sun, he again directly confronted racist attitudes. Although Grant chose his roles carefully, it was difficult for him to avoid being stereotyped. During the first performance of the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd, staged in Nottingham in 1964, he sang “Feeling Good”, (subsequently released on the record Cy and I). The lyrics herald a ‘new dawn, a new day’, but Grant was cast in the role of ‘Negro’, a black man who only manages to get ahead by avoiding a class war being fought by the play’s main protagonists, ‘Sir’ and ‘Cocky’. Grant then played Othello in the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in 1965, before going on to a leading role in Gerry Anderson’s puppet television series Captain Scarlett and the Mysterons, where he played Lieutenant Green. He also made a brief appearance as Dr. Gordon in Anderson’s science fiction film, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, and featured in other cameo roles over the years, including in The Persuaders, Softly Softly and Blakes 7. His last film role was in At the Earth’s Core.
Grant’s daughter, Samantha Moxon, recalls her father becoming frustrated at the stereotypical roles offered to black actors, and his increasing awareness of institutionalised racism in British society. Eventually he turned his back on acting and in 1974 founded, along with John Mapondera from Zimbabwe, “Drum”, an arts centre in London devoted to promoting black talent. The following year, Drum presented a two-week programme at the ICA. Grant was already moving on; he adapted Aimé Césaire’s 1939 poem Notebook on a Return to My Native Land. which he toured to venues throughout Britain in the mid-1970s. Exploring issues of race, the epic poem celebrates ‘negritude’, a central tenet of the Civil Rights movement in the USA. The final photographs of Grant taken by Adrian Flowers date from 26th February 1975(Job 7758); however these are not preserved in the AF Archive. In 1981, Grant became chairman of Concord, a festival that again celebrated cultural diversity in Britain. He was a prolific writer, and among his books are Ring of Steel, a study of the Trinidadian steelpan band, (with a focus on how scrap metal is transformed into uplifting music), and Blackness and the Dreaming, an account, inspired by Joseph Campbell’s writings on mythology, of Grant’s own road to self-discovery. Grant died in 2009, aged ninety. He was survived by his wife Dorit, and four children. In 1997 he had been made an honorary Fellow of the University of Roehampton, and in 2017 a plaque was unveiled at his home, at 54 Jackson’s Lane, Highgate.
Edna O’Brien photographed by Adrian Flowers in 1975
Even before the publication of her first novel The Country Girls, Edna O’Brien enjoyed–if that is the word–a complicated relationship with her native country. Like many Irish writers, O’Brien had sought freedom, to express herself without having to self-censor or be censored, but she was also ambitious, seeking fame and success. And so, marrying the writer Carlo Gebler against her parents’ wishes, she upped with him and moved to London in 1954, where she worked as a publishers’ reader. The Country Girls, her first novel published six years later, may have been banned, burned and denounced from the pulpit in Ireland, but it was also widely read and liked by those who appreciated fine and original writing. In those days, the difference between a novel passing the censor, or being banned, was reflected in sales. Banned books could go to multiple printings, while those who sailed through the censor’s trawl, might sink without trace. Ireland in those years enjoyed a level of national hypocrisy not dissimilar to the Party elite in Moscow, who liked to watch Hollywood films on VHS, while denouncing the Capitalist West. The Abbey Theatre, where O’Brien’s play The Gatheringpremiered in October 1974, was, in terms of architecture and status, eerily reminiscent of the state theatres on Karl-Marx Allee in East Berlin. Perhaps co-incidentally, the Artistic Director of the Abbey, Tomas MacAnna, had studied at the Berliner Ensemble. However, fortified by the example of Brecht, he had the courage to stage new plays he knew would be unpopular. O’Brien’s programme notes for that first performance in 1974 show that she was taking no prisoners in her mapping of family relationships:
Oedipus had no choice but to dishonour his mother, God or Gods had decreed it. His father tried to circumvent it, he himself riled against it, nevertheless Jocasta’s body became the vehicle for the tragedy of all three.
We long to know more about these people, their intimate characteristics, how winning, how warm was she; how lewd or how tyrannical the father, how calculating the whitehaired son? But it is too far away and we are filled more with the idea. The unthinkable seed of incest, of love fuelled by hate, of voracious family ties, –these gnaw at us, and we put them out of our minds again and again, we shirk them. It is why we meet at Christmas, and often go home with a curious want in our souls.
Some get called parents, some get called children, who will, in turn, be called parents by children who cannot know that these parents are still struggling to get out of unmerciful long-deceased wombs. The convulutions are vast—so too are the longings, and the dread.
This then is a family, not unlike any other family, except perhaps that it is a rather more eventful day.
At such premieres, after the curtain-call, it was customary for the audience to applaud, and call for the author. However such was the degree of societal complicity, that the first night audience in Dublin in October 1974 remained silent, so condemning themselves to that nameless dustbin of spineless and anonymous bourgeois complicity, and leaving the playwright to go from strength to strength. In London, O’Brien became celebrated in literary and wider circles, not only for the quality of her novels but also because she became the living embodiment of a critical view of Ireland shared by others who had been forced to emigrate: in this, she shares a literary niche with Frank McCourt. As a child in Ireland, although educated at a ‘good’ boarding school at Loughrea, she had found the atmosphere of rural Ireland stifling. The Cathedral at Loughrea might have been embellished with fine Celtic Revival stained glass, and Lady Gregory, one of the founder of the Abbey, had lived nearby, with W B Yeats, Augustus John and other writers and artists making frequent visits, but by the 1940’s this flourishing of the arts was a memory. In London in the 1960’s, O’Brien met and was friendly with Adrian Flowers, and he photographed her on several occasions, capturing not only her tousled beauty but also her steely determination to survive, and to succeed.
Edna O’Brien photographed by Adrian Flowers for The Arts In Ireland, June 1975 Volume 3, No. 2
Adrian Flowers in India May 1963 Job Nos. 4551 – 4558
On May 1st 1963, having flown from Kenya to Mumbai (Bombay), Adrian Flowers and his art director Terry Flounders checked in to the city’s grandest hotel, the Taj Mahal. While appreciating the large rooms with their overhead fans and air conditioning, Flowers found the city overwhelming: “so many people, 4 ½ million, all in the streets. Men in loose white shirts and trousers, girls in colourful saris, many unfortunates lying or squatting about. The whole place is buzzing.” He took snapshots as they drove through the city, focusing on quintessential details: cyclists, double-decker buses, shop signs, and an old horse-drawn ‘Victoria’ carriage, a relic of the Raj.
The following morning the pair were up early, for a long flight south to Cochin [Kochi], and a short stopover before they boarded a plane to Coimbatore, a town in the mountains north-east of Kochi. There they were met by a Mr. Simmonds, who took them to Giles Thurnham’s house, where they were to stay for the night.
Their third day in India was again an early start. After a six-hour car drive in a Plymouth shooting brake, they arrived in the High Wavys mountains [Meghamalai], some two hundred kilometres south of Coimbatore, where they were to stay for three nights. Flowers summed up the estates: “ ‘High Wavys’ and nearby ‘Cloudlands’ (good title for ad shot, but no time), very attractive estates carved out of jungle. It was there that both V.P. and contour planting were begun.” A Brooke Bond magazine ad from 1956 exhorted Indians to thank Lord Bentinck for introducing tea to India in the early nineteenth century, a sentiment that overlooked the environmental degradation caused by the conversion of thousands of acres of forest into tea monoculture. As well as rows of lush tea bushes, Flowers’s photographs show serried ranks of pesticide sprayers, and lines of tea pickers, all women. The majority of tea pickers were, and remain, relatively impoverished, in contrast to their employers, who enjoyed a relatively privileged lifestyle. However, unlike Kenya, where the former Brooke Bond estates are now owned by a Luxembourg-based investment fund, the tea business in India has transitioned more smoothly from colonial times to independence and is now owned by Hindustan Unilever, who market products such as Green Label, Red Label and Kora Dust. India’s development as a nation is reflected in the success of Hindustan Unilever. In 1963, the Chairman was V.K. Murthy, who had risen through the ranks as a tea salesman.
On arrival at High Wavys, Flowers and Terry had a late lunch with the estate manager and his wife, Ernest and Audrey Haggard. “Another pleasantly designed bungalow, although not so well appointed as the others. In fact I think they vacated their room for us. Wonderful view. Family comprised a little boy of 3 called Adrian, who was very shy indeed, and could hardly speak English because he spent so much time with the servants; and a baby girl. Audrey (the mother) . . seemed pretty fed up, the only white woman on the estates and for hundreds of miles probably. Ernest, a strange mixture. ‘Home’ is somewhere near London, but in fact he was born in India and was here all the war in Darjeeling where he was educated probably with Indians to a large extent . . I noticed how very ably he spoke to the Indians in their own tongue, which is Tamil in Southern India and Hindi in the north, most that is. He would speak both.”
The next day they were met by Coutier, an Indian manager in charge of the neighbouring estate Vennier. “He showed us V.P. nurseries and shearing pluckers and then took us to his place for lunch where we met his striking wife Rani (short for Maharani). We are travelling now, just above the most extraordinary clouds. I wish I could take a picture, but it is strictly forbidden. There are notices all over the airports as well. That afternoon when the light had faded from a photographic point of view, Coutier took us to a point where, by walking up a hill for a mile, we arrived at the edge of the escarpment. An almost vertical drop of 5000’. Incredible view of mountains and troubled skies. On one side, some 50 miles away, a tremendous thunderstorm was in progress. I took a few TX135 shots with 28mm, but they will be of no use unless blown up enormous.” They seem to have enjoyed themselves at Coutier’s, and the following day Flowers was taking photographs on Ernest Haggard’s estate. “Did not see Coutier or Rani again. So no dancing.”
Flowers photographed all stages of tea production, from the VP (Vegetative Propagative) nurseries, through to the final packing into plywood tea chests. He also documented the company’s coffee processing plant, photographing coffee being packed in large tins, ready for shipping. The factory was managed by a combination of European and Indian technicians and managers. The tins were made in the factory, as were wooden crates and packets. Although the factory was modern, with up-to-date equipment and conveyor belts carrying tea chests onto lorries, outside the building an older India survived, with white oxen drawing wagons laden with old oil drums.
The following morning, Flowers took what he described as the most important shot of the trip: “waddery around the Motherbush S.A.6”. He wanted to take photographs of teacups and saucers with the motherbush in the background but was disappointed with the standard of cups available. “We hope to buy some in Calcutta.” After lunch, they travelled to the Anomalian mountain range, and then onwards to the hill station Valparai, still in the Coimbatore region of Tamil Nadu. With an elevation of three and a half thousand feet above sea level, it was hotter than the estates at higher altitudes. Valparai is at the centre of estates that include Nadumalai, Stanmore and Nallakattu.
By Friday May 10th Flowers was in Chennai, [then called Madras]. “I’m writing in my room in the Connemara Hotel, of all places, in Madras. The temperature outside rains between 95 and 105. I’m beginning to like it. . .We were met just now at Madras airport by Mr White who brought us here and then to the government office. There we argued for 20 minutes in order to sign forms in order to buy an expensive drink! Doesn’t seem worth it. . . Passports were taken from us in Bombay to be sent to Calcutta to get special permission to get into Assam etc so that we are not delayed. The red tape is fantastic. . . In a few minutes Mr White is calling for us and is taking us out to dinner. Tomorrow morning he has promised to show us a few places.”
Touring through the streets of Chennai, Flowers again photographed everyday details; horse-drawn carriages dating from Victorian times, a traffic policeman shading himself with an umbrella, an aging Austin Ten car parked outside a row of shops. The streets were crowded with traders, women dressed in saris, and men in white shirts and trousers. There were awnings to shield pedestrians from sun and rain, while cattle ambled past the Rainbow Hotel. His own lodgings were more palatial; he photographed the high ceilinged bedroom with mosquito nets over the beds. The Parrys district provided ample subject matter: Several photographs show the motley shops lining NSC Bose Street, looking towards the distant towers of the High Court. Several buildings are now gone, including the ornate Esman Building with its watch shops and Gramophone House, replaced, as is much of Bose Street, with a modern-day medley of hoardings, cheap plastic signs and opportunist pavement hawkers. The traffic in 1963 was mainly composed of bicycles, rickshaws and horse-drawn jutkas, with a few modern saloon cars; nowadays motorcycles and yellow three-wheel taxis throng the busy street. Flowers also photographed the corner of Periyar Salai, with the white clock tower of the Ripon Building in the background. and the grand Chennai Central railway station, with its Victorian clock tower. A visit to Fort St. George was also part of the tour, with its museum of armaments and portraits of generals and viceroys, and the nearby Anglican church of St. Mary’s, with its memorial plaques recording the many who had died in pursuit of an imperial vision.
The following day, May 11th, Flowers flew north to Calcutta (Kolkata). During his time there he again ventured out with his camera. The streets were wide and dusty – a far cry from the traffic jams of today’s Kolkata. Several photographs include signs for companies still in business, such as K.R. Lynch., a surgical supplier on Chittaranjan Avenue, opposite the School of Tropical Medicine. Flowers snapped a lorry full of soldiers looking suspiciously at this English photographer. He took in tourist sites, photographing the Pareshnath Jain Temple, on Badridas Temple Street, a building dating from the 1860’s with ornate gardens and interior halls lined with mirrors.
After Calcutta, Flowers and Terry flew to Mohanbari, a town in Assam, in a twin-engined Fokker Friendship. On a previous flight, their C 47 Dakota had hit turbulence in an electrical storm, with ensuing chaos: “Baggage fell all over the place. Teapots and cutlery onto the floor in the kitchen. Children screaming. The pilot was game and threw the machine nose down, and then after sliding about crab fashion, made quite a reasonable landing.” On that flight they were accompanied by Mr. Nagarajan, a director of Brooke Bond, who ‘quite enjoyed’ the spectacle. The Fokker Friendship encountered no turbulence and the flight to Mohanbari went well. Returning to Calcutta, they stayed at the Grand Hotel, which Flowers described as ‘enormous’, with a long walk from the lift to their rooms; their Antler suitcases stacked three high on a porter’s head. After dinner they watched a second-rate cabaret. “We were able to drink thank goodness. Calcutta is ‘wet’. The price of a drink is incredible. Bottle of scotch £10! Indian beer is not too bad though, and reasonable.”
The following day, they were taken on a tour of Calcutta by a Mr. Gaush, in a Dodge shooting brake. Gaush started by showing them the more affluent areas, then the middle class sections, then the poorest districts: “There are enough poor wretched humans in this one town to make the whole of life on this planet a mockery. Every conceivable unpleasant sight, pavement dwellers all over the place, tolerated by the others. ‘The unconcern of the occident’ someone said.” In 1963, the city of Calcutta had eight million inhabitants, with a water supply designed for a quarter that number. Flowers gave Gaush films for safe keeping, then he and Terry took a flight back to Coimbatore and the High Wavys estate, to photograph the famous Mother Bush: “On our way to the airport we called at the best shops to buy china. Terrible stuff. The third place was fruitful enough for us to buy something.”
After High Wavys they went on to Anomalia where they stayed at the home of Roger and June Hands, and, under pressure for time, cancelled lunches that had been arranged in order to concentrate on photography. Flowers chose a small group of female workers to pose for the tea picking scenes. He was aware that the women were from a low caste in the Indian social system, but the following day they showed up, all dressed in their best saris. [photograph top of page] “It is quite tricky getting Indians or Africans to smile. They all think they should be serious in a photograph.” The following day, Flowers and Terry returned to Coimbatore, a four hour drive. ” It took nearly 2 hours to slowly get down the 40 hairpin bends to the hot plains below.” This time, they could not stay with the Thurnmans, as there was a UK trade delegation visiting, so they were guests at the England Club. ” . . we met some of them in the bar, in fact all the local (Southern Indian European) talent, about 20 odd people. I found myself talking to a charming over talkative woman who told me she had wanted to be an actress and sing comedy…. etc.” That was their last day in India; they then returned to Nairobi, as the weather had improved in Kenya and photographing the tea estates was now feasible.
Flowers’s journey in India had taken him the length and breadth of the continent. Travelling from Mumbai [Bombay] in the West, to Chennai [Madras] on the Indian Ocean, then to Kolkata [Calcutta] and Assam in the North East, he had stayed in some of India’s grandest hotels, and photographed the estates, factories and godowns (warehouses) of Brooke Bond. In addition to modern factories, his eye was drawn to a quintessential India that was passing, a world of horse-drawn carriages, rickshaws, ox carts and snake-charmers. He enjoyed meeting the tea estate managers and their families, but missed his own home in London. Meanwhile, back in St. John’s Wood, in addition to looking after their three young children, Angela was also keeping an eye on the photographic studio, where Valerie and David were processing the rolls of film sent home by Flowers.
Terry Flounders and Adrian Flowers beside the Cessna Skywagon, piloted by Roy Marsh
The Brooke Bond tea plantation at Kericho, Kenya 1963
In April 1963, having just recovered from a year of illness, and facing the responsibility of providing for a family that now included three young boys, Adrian Flowers was commissioned to travel to Africa and India, to photograph tea plantations for the Brooke Bond company. It was too good an opportunity to pass up; by this time Brooke Bond had overtaken Lyons to become the largest tea company in the world. With plantations in India, Ceylon and Africa, it employed over 50,000 people. In Britain, Brooke Bond tea and PG Tips were popular brands, with the company using traditional forms of marketing, such as collectors cards, and also maintaining a fleet of distinctive red delivery vans. In the 1950s, the company ran a campaign entitled “The Story of Tea”, with a series of full-page colour documentary-style ads in magazines, depicting smiling workers planting, harvesting and processing tea. The accompanying texts were of their time: “The forest has been beaten. The matted undergrowth and tangled vines are gone. The trees have been felled and uprooted. Shade trees have been planted. A new tea estate is born. . .”
Terry Flounders and Adrian Flowers setting up an advertising shot for Brooke Bond
By 1963, the “Story of Tea” ads were looking old-fashioned and Bill Barter of the advertising firm Spotiswoode wanted to try something new; he contacted Adrian Flowers and asked him to tour the Brooke Bond plantations with his camera, taking photographs of both the growing and processing of tea, and also some marketing images. There was also a political edge to the commission: on June 1st of that year, Jomo Kenyatta was being sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Kenya, and six months later the country would declare independence from Britain. After reaping the benefits of eight decades of colonial rule, Brooke Bond would have been nervous about the future of their plantation at Kericho, which occupied prime farm land in the Rift Valley. Ostensibly, Flowers was asked to photograph the cultivation of tea for an updated Tea Story, but there may also have been a propaganda element to his tour, with Brooke Bond assembling evidence of good management, to help retain ownership of the plantation.
Going back half a century, in 1905, a massacre of Kipsigis warriors had paved the way at Kericho for a land grab by British interests. Anyone who resisted colonial rule was forcibly re-located. Initially the farms at Kericho were intended to cultivate flax, and the British East African Disabled Officers Cooperative (Beadoc) invested heavily in this project. However there was a collapse in the price of flax and Beadoc ran up substantial debts. At an auction in 1925, Brooke Bond and James Finlay bought the lands at Kericho, for £3 an acre. By 1963 the Brooke Bond plantation covered thirty thousand acres. Although the agreement whereby Kenya achieved independence called for the return of tribal lands, this was not done in the case of Kericho, and today the matter is still in dispute in Kenya’s law courts. Britain has declined to accept responsibility, stating as it is more than thirty years since independence, the case cannot be pursued.
On the 20th April, Flowers and the Spotiswoode art director, Terry Flounders, flew to Africa via Rome, the flight taking over four hours. They changed planes at Khartoum, waiting in an uncomfortable transit area for a flight to Nairobi. “Terry was chatting away . . to a man reluctantly returning to Kenya to manage some timber concern. He said he couldn’t wait to get back to his beloved Cornwall in 3 years’ time, once and for all.” After a wait of several hours they boarded a de Havilland Comet jet. Flowers suffered a severe headache during the flight, but recovered when they landed.
Arriving in Nairobi, they were taken to a private aerodrome where they met their pilot Roy Marsh, who was flying a four seater Cessna. Marsh enjoyed a degree of fame in aviation and literary history as he had been piloting the Cessna-180 in which Ernest Hemingway survived a crash some years earlier. After stowing their cases securely, they took off in bright sunshine, with Terry and Roy sitting in the front seats, and Flowers behind. His initial delight turned to disappointment when they entered cloud, but Marsh, an experienced pilot, ducked in and out of the clouds to show them Nairobi from the air, storks flying in formation and millions of flamingos at the end of a salty lake. As they approached Kericho, just east of Lake Victoria, Marsh banked the aircraft, to give them a view of the tea plantations below. Unfortunately the cloud was thickening and the light was not suitable for photography. They landed on a strip of green grass, Marsh taxiing the aircraft straight into a hanger. From there they were taken in a Ford Zodiac to the Tea Hotel, a colonial-style club house built by Brooke Bond in 1950, and by far the best hotel in Kericho. Rather than staying in the main building, the two visitors had been given a suite of rooms in a nearby bungalow, which had parquet floors, French windows and herbaceous borders outside. Their first visitor was David Russell, who took them in a faded white Vauxhall Cresta to the hotel, to meet the ‘big boss’, nicknamed ‘Beegers’: “He was there, a kind of English Magoo in white shirt, khaki shorts flaying out, long pale brown socks. Cinzano I asked for, by this time I was against whisky and beer . . Pleasant but slightly distant conversation, and off they both went leaving us to have lunch at the hotel. Unbelievable food in large hall-like dining room with about 15 tables, 7 white people sedately eating, scattered all over room, 8 black people wearing white tunics and trousers and green fez hats serving. A huge cold buffet, but besides that a comprehensive table d’hote menu, some twelve items all of which you could have if you were hungry enough. Price 10 shillings.” The Tea Hotel had been built by the company in 1950, perhaps in anticipation of a royal visit to Kericho—indeed just two years later it welcomed Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh on their tour of Africa. A few days later while on safari, Elizabeth learned of her father’s death, and that she was to be Queen. Sold in 1975 to the Kenya Tourism Development Corporation, the hotel in more recent year has become the subject of protracted legal disputes. It is now closed and semi-derelict, although some renovation work has begun in recent months.
After lunch, Russell took the visitors on a tour of the plantation, and then to his home, where they had tea with his wife, who was French, and their four children. Flowers was saddened to learn that the Russells had been given notice to leave their paradise. “David has been given notice to leave Brooke Bond through no fault of his own. So they will probably have to leave the country. His job has been made redundant as a result of the political events. He was in charge of Brooke Bond free educational service to the Africans which has now been withdrawn.” After Russell gave them a slide show of the whole process of cultivating and processing tea, they returned to the hotel, just in time for a six course dinner. Then it was back to the bungalow, ‘flaked out’. There followed two days of what Flowers described as ‘library photography’. As it was the rainy season, the light was not ideal. The weather was against him, locations were far apart, and advertising photography, which Flowers considered his main purpose, ‘seemed to be going by the board’. He planned to return to Kericho, after he had been to India, when the weather improved. On Sunday, they were taken by ‘Beegers’ on a tour of the estate, the boss driving a Chevrolet fitted with an altimeter, Kericho being over six thousand feet above sea level.
On 25th April, Adrian photographed tea workers, dressed in yellow oilcloth smocks, as they toiled in the fields. Many of the young women were happy to smile for the camera, but there were some sterner glances from some of the male workers. Groups of women pickers posed for the camera, holding long poles and carrying baskets on their backs. Lines of men carrying portable spray canisters sprayed the crops. Supervised by a white man wearing khaki shorts, a yellow bulldozer cleared forest and scrub to expand the planting area. Flowers photographed another white man, carrying a camera, standing in a field in front of a sign reading ‘Hanza’—a plant used in Africa for making beer, and perhaps part of an experimental programme run by Brooke Bond. Packed into large bales, the harvested tea was hauled to warehouses using Massey Ferguson tractors and trailers, with men sitting on top of the bales. Flowers photographed a convoy of trucks, painted in the Brooke Bond livery of bright red, as they rolled out of the warehouse compound. Young men assembled plywood tea chests, nailing strips of tin onto the corners. Lined with aluminium foil and marked ‘Produce of Kenya’ the chests were then sealed for export. Although the commission does not seem to have included photographs for specific ads, Flowers also photographed boxes of PG Tips and Brooke Bond’s Choicest, in the fields, with workers in the background. . Although he used over fifty rolls of film for ‘library’ work, he did manage to take photographs that could be used in advertising, including one of different coloured tea sacks.
Flowers wrote down his his impressions of Kenya: “Its nearly on the equator but in spite of that it is temperate because of the rain that falls so often. This is what makes it suitable for tea, although it has been grown here a few years. It is not unlike Ireland except that the grass believe it or not is even greener and thicker. The grass on the lawn here for instance is kept very short, but even so, it is like walking on a cinema carpet. We have already encountered lizards frogs slugs and millipedes, but have yet to meet the big game of which there are still plenty. The African villages are marvellous and well kept. Many Africans wear bright colours. The women of certain tribes walk very gracefully. Adolescent girls and boys wear special clothes before and after their circumcision ceremonies. Many adults have large holes in their ears, but westernisation is creeping up, and many of these are having their holes sewn up again!”
In letters to Angela in London, Flowers describes the local scenery and who they met, but rarely mentions the political situation. In 1963, for plantation employees in Kericho, the work was hard, but by standards of the time in Africa, the pay was not bad. The new Kenyan government was keen to keep companies such as Brooke Bond in operation, tea cultivation being a vital source of revenue for the nation, as well as being a good employer. In 1950, the colonial administration had founded the Tea Board of Kenya, partly to prevent small-scale tea farmers from competing with large producers. But after the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau uprising, more equitable policies were introduced. Dominated by men, the trades unions at Kericho fought effectively on behalf of the plantation employees. Flowers photographed the workers in the fields, but also the processing of tea, which during those years was being increasingly mechanised, particularly after the introduction of the ‘crush, tear, curl’ (CTC) process.
In some ways 1963 was a golden era in the plantation’s history, with optimism surrounding Kenya’s independence and the benefits of Brooke Bond’s colonial and paternalistic approach to estate management evident. Flowers photographed rows of neat small houses built for workers. There were also schools, medical centres and a hospital. In the 1980’s, Brooke Bond was acquired by Unilever and the Kericho estates became just one asset in a giant multi-national company’s portfolio. In more recent years, with the international price of tea dropping, and mechanised harvesting resulting in workers being laid off or placed on short term contracts, the labour situation at Kericho has become shameful, with allegations of ill-treatment, exploitation and poor housing now rife on the former Brooke Bond estate. Such allegations likely contributed to the decision by Unilever in 2022 to sell the Kericho tea plantation to CVC, a Luxembourg-based investment fund.
After his visit to Kericho, Flowers met up again with Roy Marsh. Boarding the four seater Cessna, they flew south to Mufindi, in Tanzania, a journey of some five hours, including touching down to refuel at Dodoma: “We went high first of all, above the clouds, put out the trailing aerial to radio Dodoma. Down again to look for elephant, lion, rhino, giraffe, ostrich etc all of which we found even though not easy at this time of the year. I had many attempts at shooting with the Nikon, but it was very difficult, because when flying low the machine is bumping all over the place. Also any point on the ground disappears in an instant. But it was great fun, especially since our excitement gave Roy extra enthusiasm and he really went out of his way for our benefit. It was amusing to know that it was he who was piloting Hemingway when they crashed!”
A good deal of the countryside below, particularly in Tanzania, was scrubland. Landing on a dusty airstrip at Dodoma, they realised how hot it was. They were regarded with slight interest by locals as they sheltered from the sun under the Cessna wing, drinking coffee from a flask. Landing eventually, and two hours late, at Mufindi, a cool oasis situated at a height of some six thousand feet, they were met by Peter Knight and Richard Hartley. They stayed at Knight’s house for three nights. The weather was misty, and over the following days Flowers tried to take advertising pictures. Their visit was not all work. On the first night Knight brought them to the local club, membership of which consisted of some twenty-five men, mostly English, who managed farms and estates. The club had a bar, library and a room for social meetings and fortnightly film showings. “The following was Saturday and we were asked if we would like to see the films. It was not ‘feature night’, but shorts. Nobody knew what they were going to be, but were determined to enjoy them. We all tanked up (first time incidentally). After a couple of hours we entered the ‘cinema’, sat on awful canvas seats. On came the news, 2 months out of date. ‘Royal Events 1960’ came next, which was priceless, all told from a ‘commonwealth’ point of view. About 6 more, like ‘England is a garden’. Can you imagine it. And there was clapping at the end in honest appreciation.” All the men, Flowers noted, were ‘sporty types’ wearing shorts, and playing golf, tennis and rugger. The women played hockey. On weekends, there were expeditions to Dar (Dar es Salaam) and snorkelling in the warm shallow waters.
Flowers wondered at how the expatriates got on so well: “I asked them if they suffered domestic differences in such a close community, and was told that because they were so interdependent by force of circumstances they just had to ‘get on’ and in fact did.” The question was not casual. In 1963, Adrian’s wife Angela was not only looking after their young children but also helping out at the studio. Due to Adrian’s illness in 1962, the family had had to leave their house and move to a flat. The studio had not been making money, yet he was determined to keep his staff on. Angela stepped in, to work as his assistant. One of her jobs was to sell surplus photographic equipment, as well as their beloved VW camper van, to raise money to keep the business going. Letters between them, while Flowers was travelling in Africa and India, reveal a growing rift.
This is Tomorrow Aug-Sept 1956 Whitechapel Gallery, London
In 1952, a group began meeting regularly at the ICA in London, to explore ways in which art and architecture could be better integrated into everyday life, and vice versa. Known as “Independent Group” or ‘IG’, these artists, architects and theorists also wanted to look beyond Modernism, and to incorporate new mass media influences, such as advertising, comic books and science fiction, into art. Their ideas were popularised through exhibitions at the ICA, notably the 1953 Parallel of Life and Art, curated by Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Alison and Peter Smithson, and Collages and Life, curated the following year by Lawrence Alloway. Having attended several IG meetings, Theo Crosby, an architect born and trained in South Africa, proposed a more ambitious exhibition that would reflect the ideas of the group. In addition to being an architect—his 1956 house at Rutland Grove, Hammersmith, is seen as an early example of the Brutalist movement—Crosby was also an editor and sculptor, working mainly in plaster and mosaic-style coloured glass. Bryan Robertson, Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, agreed to host the exhibition. Titled This is Tomorrow, the concept was loosely based on Groupe Espace, an association in France inspired by the Constructivist movement and André Bloc’s journal Art d’aujourd’hui, formed in 1951. At the Whitechapel, along with Germano Facetti and Edward Wright, Crosby brought together members of IG and other artists and architects. In all, thirty-seven creative talents were assembled into twelve teams, each team being asked to devise an installation in which the boundaries between art and architecture would be blurred. Crosby was in Group One, along with Facetti, Wright, and the sculptor William Turnbull.
This is Tomorrow opened at the Whitechapel on 9th August 1956 and ran for just four weeks. In his catalogue introduction, the art writer Lawrence Alloway cited earlier Modernist movements where collaboration, as with GroupeEspace, was seen as the way forward. However as he observed, ‘yesterday’s tomorrow is not today’ and the art of the latter half of the twentieth century was not to be based on a ‘rosy fiction of the middle ages’. Within the competitive environment of post-war capitalist society, Alloway recognised that the artists at Whitechapel were in competition with each other, each seeking to define what the art of the future might be. The poet David Lewis also contributed an introductory essay. Like Crosby, Lewis had moved to Britain after the introduction of apartheid in South Africa, settling in St. Ives where he married the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. In 1955 Adrian Flowers had photographed Lewis and Barns-Graham in St. Ives. But by the following year, their marriage was breaking up, and Lewis was moving to Leeds to study architecture. He also, like Crosby, was full of enterprise and was promoting a speculative Modernist housing project in Huddersfield.
An innovative work in its own right, the catalogue for This is Tomorrow, designed by Edward Wright and edited by Theo Crosby, documented the teams’ concepts rather than finished results. Each team was asked to submit six pages of material. Richard Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?,created at the home of IG members Magda and Frank Cordell, is probably the contribution best remembered today. Companies, several of whom had sponsored the exhibition, placed advertisements; they included Hille furniture, Wates builders, Crittall windows, ICI Perspex, and plastics firms such as Geon and Styron. Ads were also placed by booksellers and publishers, including Faber and Faber, and Better Books, an alternative bookshop on Charing Cross Road. An artist who worked at Better Books, Anne Buchanan, was also involved in the installation of the exhibition.
On 6th August, three days before the opening, Adrian Flowers visited the Whitechapel and photographed the installations nearing completion. [AF Archive Job No. 2086]. He was likely there at the invitation of artist Victor Pasmore—at that time Pasmore’s son John was working as an assistant in the Flowers’ studio. Notwithstanding this link, since his own school days at Sherborne, Flowers had been fascinated with advertising imagery in magazines such as Life, and would have delighted in artists Richard Hamilton and John McHale using mass media images in their artworks. Although it would be fifteen years before Angela Flowers opened her own art gallery, she was also with Adrian Flowers at the Whitechapel that day, along with their young son Adam.
John Pasmore (centre), Adrian Flowers’ assistant at this time. David Lewis on the left. Photograph: Adrian Flowers
Adam Flowers, aged 3, in the foreground, Angela Flowers sitting behind. Photograph: Adrian Flowers
The sixty photographs taken by Adrian Flowers are for the most part general shots, showing the large gallery spaces being taken over by temporary walls, pavilions, sculptures and paintings. Many images feature Pasmore, but Adrian also documented other areas, including Group 2’s Fun House, one of the more crowd-friendly installations in the exhibition. Fun House was devised by Richard Hamilton, John McHale and architect John Voelcker, the latter creating the frame structure within which artifacts and artworks were displayed. Flowers also photographed the large Op-Art murals, designed by McHale and painted by Magda Cordell. A founder of the ICA, and an originator of the Pop Art movement in Britain, McHale had just returned from a year at the Albers Foundation in the United States. His sketch for a poster with three bold arrows, translated into a screen-print design by Richard Hamilton, conveys the sense of direct, graphic excitement that characterised This is Tomorrow. Adrian also photographed the Op-Art discs, published by Marcel Duchamp as lithographs two decades earlier, and intended for display on record turntables. Reissued in a new edition in 1953 by Enrico Donati, McHale had acquired a set of these Rotoreliefs in New York directly from Duchamp. Several appear in Flowers’ photographs of the Group 2 installation, including Rotorelief No. 12 –Spirale Blanche.
Group 3 comprised three artists represented by the Gimpel Fils Gallery; the abstract painter and furniture designer Jon Catleugh; James Hull, an industrial designer who had worked on murals for the Festival of Britain; and Leslie Thornton, a sculptor from Yorkshire., whose skeletal metal sculptures stood tall in the exhibition spaces. The Group 3 manifesto playfully recorded their love of organised chaos, Eartha Kitt and American cars; and their dislike of dove grey, phone bills and the church. Anthony Jackson and Emilio Scanavino were in Group Four, along with Sarah Jackson, an American-born sculptor whose white abstract plaster sculptures with their writhing forms animated the Whitechapel space. Several Expressionist paintings by Scanavino were suspended from the ceilings.
Photograph above and below showing sculpture by Leslie Thornton. Photographs: Adrian Flowers
Group Five comprised Anthony Hill, Denis Williams and John Ernest; Ernest’s tall Constructivist sculptures, constructed of vertical steel rods and horizontal Perspex panels, were being assembled as Flowers took his photos.
Anthony Hill. Photograph: Adrian Flowers
John Ernest and ? with his work. Photographs: Adrian Flowers
John Ernest setting up his work. Victor Pasmore constructions on the wall to the left. Photographs: Adrian Flowers
The Group 6 installation, sub-titled “Patio and Pavilion” was the work of IG members Peter and Alison Smithson, Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson. In the Group 7 installation, free-standing walls, designed by Ernö Goldfinger, were used to display works by Victor Pasmore and Helen Phillips. A drawing by Goldfinger was reproduced in the catalogue, and he also appears in Flowers’ photographs, standing beside Pasmore. Goldfinger’s daughter Liz later worked for Crosby at the magazine AD.
Victor Pasmore (centre), Ernö Goldfinger beyond. Photograph: Adrian Flowers
One photograph by Flowers was taken looking through the Group 7 installation into the Group 8 section, that included Richard Matthews, architect/sculptor Michael Pine, and James Stirling. Born in Wolverhampton in 1928, Pine had studied architecture in Birmingham and lived in St. Ives, Cornwall. His organic papier-mache “bubble” sculptures feature in several photographs. In Group 9 were Kenneth and Mary Martin, and John Weeks—the latter taking the diffusing of boundaries idea literally, as he appears also in Group 11. To display the work of the Martins, Weeks designed a modular stand made of free-standing gypsum plaster “Bellrock” panels, arranged in a triangular plan and fastened together at the top, so as to be self-supporting.
One of the most striking photographs by Flowers is of quirky Modernist corridor in the Group Ten installation. The design of this corridor was the work of Frank Newby, an engineer who worked on the Skylon at the 1951 Festival of Britain, and architects Colin St. John Wilson and Peter Carter, both of whom worked on post-war housing in London. St. John Wilson appears in one photograph, kneeling as he works on the corridor. Visible in the distance is ‘Robbie the Robot’, a figure from Forbidden Planet, a science-fiction film released earlier that year. The official opening of the exhibition was performed by Robbie.
Colin St John Wilson, with ‘Robbie the Robot’ in the background. Photograph: Adrian Flowers
Group Ten also included work by Robert Adams, a sculptor from Northampton, who features elsewhere in the AF Archive—indeed several of the participants in This is Tomorrowappear elsewhere in the Archive, including Pasmore, John Ernest, Anthony Hill, Kenneth and Mary Martin, and Robert Adams.
Group Eleven comprised Adrian Heath, a sculptor who had studied at the Slade, and John Weeks, a graduate of the Architectural Association. Two years earlier, Weeks had organised an exhibition at the Building Centre entitled Artist Versus Machine. Together, Heath and Weeks designed a free-standing wall that was built inside the Whitechapel Gallery. Made of standard concrete blocks laid without mortar, it served both as an architectural statement and a Minimalist sculpture. Heath also showed abstract geometric paintings, composed of rectangles and squares. The catalogue pages for Group 12—Geoffrey Holroyd, Toni Del Renzio and Lawrence Alloway—illustrated with Venn diagrams, summed up the themes of This is Tomorrow, and reiterated the idea of promoting collaboration between artist and architect.
Heavily marketed, featured by Pathé News in cinemas, and with high attendances, This is Tomorrow was a brief and vivid snapshot in time. However the IG group did not survive long; later that year, Crosby set up his own architect’s office, while Peter Carter left to work with Eero Saarinen in the United States; John McHale also moved to the US, and Michael Pine to Canada. David Lewis settled in Pittsburgh, where he was appointed Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Lawrence Alloway worked as a curator at the Guggenheim in New York, before following McHale to Southern Illinois University, and afterwards taught at SUNY in Stony Brook. Reyner Banham, who contributed an introductory text to the This is Tomorrow catalogue, also moved to the United States, publishing influential books on architecture and urban design, notably his 1971 Los Angeles; The Architecture of Four Ecologies. The term ‘brain drain’ was coined in these years, to describe the migration of talent to North America. Some participants in the exhibition, such as James Stirling and Eduardo Paolozzi, went on to international fame, while others, like John Voelcker, enjoyed intermittent success. In 1958, Voelcker designed a Modernist house near Barnet for jazz musician Humphrey Lyttleton, that featured a Surrealist mural by McHale. Anne Buchanan and Theo Crosby raised a family in Hammersmith, while their friends Peter and Alison Smithson designed controversial Brutalist housing projects. A decade after This is Tomorrow, Adrian Heath played a key role in encouraging Angela Flowers to set up her first gallery. It opened in February 1970, in Lisle Street, on the floor above the headquarters of the Artists Association, of which Heath was chairman. Coincidentally, the following year, an exhibition of Anne Buchanan Crosby’s psycho-mythological paintings took place at the AIA Gallery. In retrospect, the Minimalist abstract artists at the Whitechapel—many of whom feature separately in the Adrian Flowers Archive—remained true to their aesthetic vision, while the artists and architects interested in mass-media enjoyed mixed fortunes in the decades that followed, with many pursuing careers in academic institutions in America.
Angela Flowers age 19. First photograph of Angela by Adrian Flowers, 1951
Angela Mary Flowers 19th December 1932 – 11th August 2023
The oft-repeated concept, that Angela Flowers was ‘a force of nature’ who had somehow emerged, fully-formed, as a leading contemporary art gallerist, is belied by even a brief glance at her family background. Angela grew up in a world comfortable with international trade, enterprise and culture. On her father’s side, she was descended from a German family named Schwann, who had come to Britain in the early nineteenth century, to run textiles factories in Huddersfield. Somewhere along the way they founded the University of Huddersfield. Not once, but several times during the nineteenth century, the Schwanns married into the Holland family. It was an alliance good for the arts: in 1926 Ismena Schwann married Theodore Holland, a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, who taught Jacqueline du Pré’s mother.
Born Angela Mary Holland, in Croydon on 19th December 1932, Angela was proud of the fact that her great-grandfather, (on her mother’s side) Jesse Worts Ward, had in 1869 founded The Croydon Advertiser. In turn, Ward took pride in his mother’s family, the Bayleys, who built ships at Ipswich; large ocean-going vessels: whalers, East Indiamen, and clippers that brought cargoes of wool from Australia. Angela’s grandmother, Emma Ward, was a talented artist. She married into the Stibys, an old Dorset farming family. When Angela was still in her teens, Arthur Stiby, who had edited The Granta magazine at Cambridge, became editor of the Croydon Advertiser. To the present day, as with Robert, Jamie, and other members of the family, the Stibys sustain a lively presence in the arts.
Painting by Emma Maria Ward, 1893
‘Cox and Grapes’ 1963. Photograph by Adrian Flowers (with Emma Ward painting)
Angela was the eldest of two daughters born to Olive (née Stiby) and Geoffrey Holland. She had a younger sister, Dinah, born in 1937. The previous year, Geoffrey had used an inheritance to commission a large Modernist house “Peverel” at Shellwood Road, Leigh, near Reigate. Listed in Pevsner, it was the first commission in the UK for the architect Frederick Curtis. Although Curtis had been born in Frankfurt-on-Main in 1903, the son of a British architect and a German mother, he fled Germany when the Nazis rose to power, and became a lecturer at Liverpool University. He subsequently designed Underground stations in London, including Perivale and Hangar Lane. Angela remembered Austrian maids in the house when she was a child, and surmised that her father had helped them escape to Britain. Geoffrey’s sister Betty married the French poet and translator Pierre Leyris, and was a friend of Balthus. She appears in several of his paintings. Although idealists, Angela’s parents were also practical people. During WWII, Olive worked in a munitions factory, while Geoffrey served in Italy as an intelligence officer, and afterwards was a school teacher.
Adrian Flowers with Adam Flowers. Angela Flowers and sister Dinah Holland.
Peverel, Leigh, near Reigate
During the war, Angela was sent to a boarding school founded by the war artist Eric Kennington. She later attended Westonbirt school in Gloucestershire, which she disliked, and Wychwood in Oxford. There was a spell as an au pair in Paris, followed by a diploma at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in South Kensington, London. (Other graduates of the Webber Douglas include Angela Lansbury, Julian Fellowes, Terence Stamp and Steve Berkoff). In the late 1940s, Angela’s parents began to collect works by contemporary artists, including John Minton, John Piper and Denis Mitchell. They introduced her to art at an early age, particularly as a result of visits to Cornwall. Although quite shy, Angela was embarking on a career in stage and screen when, in 1951, having been introduced by Len Deighton, she met and fell in love with the photographer Adrian Flowers. They married soon afterwards and, while living in a flat near Primrose Hill, in 1953 Adam, their first child, was born, followed by Matthew three years later. A third son, Daniel, was born in 1959. In 1956, Angela and Adrian bought a house at Grange Road in Highgate.
Adam Flowers with Angela Flowers, 1955. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
From there, after Adrian suffered a period of illness, the family moved to a basement flat with use of a garden, in Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood. In 1964, with a growing family, Angela and Adrian moved to a house in Patshull Road, Kentish Town. The following year their daughter Francesca was born. Not long afterwards, Angela decided to start her own art gallery. Given her background and determination to succeed, Angela’s only limitation was that she did not have funds at the outset equal to her vision. But living on her wits, and being continually inventive, gave her an edge. Almost her first job was at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, and it is likely that her familiarity with the artists of St. Ives that led Adrian, at the outset of his career, to document Peter Lanyon, Denis Mitchell and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in an important series of photographs. Angela recalled that when Adrian was photographing the artists in their studios, they assumed that she also was involved in the world of contemporary art.
Peter Lanyon in his studio in St Ives, 1954 with Angela Flowers. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
While working as a bookkeeper at the ICA, in 1970, Angela opened her first gallery, at 15 Lisle Street. The receptionist at the ICA had been married to Patrick Hughes, and so Angela invited him to be the first artist to show at her new enterprise. The gallery was in what is now London’s Chinatown, above the offices of Artists International Association, a left-wing association of artists founded in the 1930s. Angela was given the space, on the basis that the lease had not long to run, and also that her artists would become members of AIA. However, the AIA staff disliked Angela and made life difficult for her, particularly when her little upstairs gallery became a commercial success. Early shows such as Tom Phillips sold out. When the AIA wound up in 1971, Angela moved her gallery to Portland Mews.
Angela Flowers outside her second gallery in Portland Mews, D’Arblay Street, London. Photograph by Malcolm Lauder. 1971
From the outset the focus was mainly on younger British artists. In addition to the British artists, international artists also showed at Angela Flowers Gallery: Ray Johnson (American) in 1972, Arakawa (Japanese) and Jeanne Masoero (Italian) in 1971. In the early years, the artists showing with the gallery included Patrick Hughes, Boyd and Evans, Brendan Neiland, Derek Hirst, Jeff Nuttall, Tom Phillips, Ian Breakwell, John Loker, Jeanne Masoero, Nancy Fouts and David Hepher. Angela was noted for encouraging young artists, and for championing women artists, notably Penny Slinger, Amanda Faulkner, Glenys Barton and Nicola Hicks. Hicks, who married Angela’s son Dan, has been with the gallery for more than thirty years. Penny Slinger’s 1973 exhibition was titled “Openings”; the works relating to the theme of food, mouths and vaginas. Exhibition themes such as Small is Beautiful, Postcard Art, and Artist of the Day—the latter set up in 1983—helped establish Angela Flowers as a leading contemporary art gallery in London. Later artists joining the gallery included Bernard Cohen, John Kirby and Peter Howson. Angela herself cut a dash, whizzing around town in a dark red Chevrolet Impala.
Angela Flowers with gallery artists in 1970. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
The Angela Flowers Gallery in London thrived, as did Adrian’s photography studio, but the strains placed on their marriage resulted in its dissolution, and in 1973 they divorced. Five years later, the gallery moved to Tottenham Mews. Angela’s new partner, Robert Heller, and the theatre impresario Michael White brought their business acumen to bear on the gallery, which became profitable in 1987.The following year, a second Angela Flowers Gallery, housed in a large former warehouse space, opened at Richmond Road in Hackney. The inaugural exhibition featured works by Lucian Freud and Eduardo Paolozzi. Angela’s son Matthew became Managing Director in 1989, and over the ensuing decades, galleries bearing the name Flowers were opened in Los Angeles (1998), New York (2003) and Hong Kong (2020) In 2002, Matthew oversaw the move from Hackney to one of London’s largest contemporary gallery spaces, Flowers, at Kingsland Road in Shoreditch. After some thirty years together, Angela and Bob Heller were married in 2003, at Islington Town Hall. Bob died in 2012.
As early as 1959, Angela and Adrian Flowers had bought an old cottage, set on a hillside overlooking the sea, in the coastal village of Rosscarbery, in West Cork, Ireland. Initially, it was a holiday home, but given Angela’s irrepressible and enterprising personality, soon it was being enlarged and renovated, and she began hosting summer exhibitions of contemporary art in a space beside the cottage. This gradually developed, until by the 1990s, in a new purpose-built gallery space, the Angela Flowers Rosscarbery weekends became a fixture in the London art world, attracting critics, artists, and collectors to Ireland. Among the artists featured at exhibition were William Crozier, Anthony Daley, Ian Breakwell, Lucy Jones, John Kirby, Terry Frost, Nicola Hicks, Patrick Hughes, Tai Shan Schierenberg and Boyd and Evans. Andrew Logan exhibited his outdoor Pegasus sculptures in the top field at Downeen in 1991. John Kirby and Ian Breakwell were both inspired to buy cottages on the same road as Downeen.
Downeen, Rosscarbery, in late 60s. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
Throughout her life, interwoven with Angela’s love of art was a passionate devotion to music, ceramics, fashion, poetry and design—part of her legacy to her children, Adam, Matthew, Daniel, Francesca and Rachel—the latter now a celebrated painter in her own right. Although described as a force of nature, Angela could be reticent, even shy, living for others and through others, often denying her own talents. She was a meticulous planner, looking forward to birthdays, dinners, vernissages, and other celebrations with joy. Such energy, and a restless spirit, sustained her to the end. In 2022, the year before she died, Angela was guest of honour at an exhibition in West Cork of photographs taken by Adrian Flowers in St. Ives in the late 1950s. Approaching her ninetieth year, she was intrigued and delighted to see her younger self in several photographs, along with Peter Lanyon and Ben Nicholson. The exhibition was held in the Adrian Flowers Archive, now located at Ballydehob, not far from Angela’s beloved gallery and home at Rosscarbery. The last exhibition held at Rosscarbery featured works from Angela’s own personal collection of paintings. Based on the theme of snow, it included works by Jack Smith, Henry Kondracki, Tai Shan Schierenberg and other leading artists.
In 1994, Angela was made a fellow of the Royal College of Art, and five years later was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of East London. She and her daughter Rachel moved from their Modernist home “Jordleys”, at Goring upon Thames, in 2014 to the seaside town of Ramsgate in 2014, where several family members lived, and with characteristic brio painted her house bright Mondrian yellow. This was partly in celebration of Vincent Van Gogh, who resided in the town in 1876. She died at Ramsgate, on 11 August 2023.
Angela Flowers wearing Zandra Rhodes cape.
Photograph by Adrian Flowers
In late November 2022, we visited the photographer Neil Selkirk in his house and studio, a stone’s throw from the David Zwirner Gallery on W.19th Street. Opening a little iron gate with a latch, we descended three steps from street level, to an oak door. Selkirk greeted us and led us through a little courtyard to his home at the rear of the building.
Inside, a lit wood-burning stove added a warm glow to the arts and crafts interior, with its dark roof beams and wooden kitchen presses. On a large wooden table, a scattering of autumn leaves and branches made a colourful display. Mounted on the wall, an ornate silver tray bore an engraved testimonial to a Selkirk forebear from the congregation of a Free Presbyterian Church in Glasgow. Even after decades of living and working in the United States, Selkirk, a cheerful conversationalist, retained his English accent. As he prepared coffee, he described his years in New York, his pride in his two children, now grown adults and working in the city, evident. Although divorced from his wife Susan, he radiated confidence and a contentment with life. “I’ve been lucky”, he commented, although this underestimates his achievements gained through skill, hard work and dedication to photography. He made coffee with the same attention to detail as though he were in a photo lab, grinding the coffee beans, and carefully preparing the steamer for warming milk.
Selkirk’s own photographs have featured in Esquire, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Interview and Vanity Fair. For over a decade he also worked in the corporate world, taking photographs for annual reports. His exhibition of portraits Certain Women was held at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in 2015. At the time of our visit, he was working on a series of close-up still life photos of bar-room toilet door locks entitled Security Matters. Printed in a large scale, several of these decorated the walls of his studio in the basement of the building. It was formerly a fully-fledged darkroom, complete with water filters and sinks, but no longer used for darkroom printing.
Best-known in the art world for his work printing the photographs of Diane Arbus since her death, Selkirk was born in London in 1947. After initial studies at Chiswick Polytechnic, he graduated from the London College of Printing, and aged twenty-one, embarked on a life-long career as a photographer. From the outset, he demonstrated a deep understanding of the science of the process; developing and fixing film, and utilising advanced printing techniques. Keen to work with the best photographers, even as a student he travelled to France and the United States. In March 1968 he was in New York, visiting the studios of leading photographers and offering his services as an assistant. This direct approach worked, and he was offered work, not only by Richard Avedon, but also by Irving Penn, Melvin Sokolsky and Bert Stern. Fortuitously, Selkirk even found himself on 40th Street, photographing Bobby Kennedy outside the New York Press Club just after he announced his candidacy for president. Although he accepted a job offer from Penn, it transpired the studio was unable to obtain a work visa for him. In the meantime, Avedon had been asked by an English advertising agency to work on a cigarette campaign and came to London, where Selkirk worked for him as an assistant.
When Selkirk realised that getting a visa to work in the US was not going to be straightforward, he sought employment in London, and was taken on by Adrian Flowers, [on 9 September 1968] at his studio in Tite Street. In a recent interview with Elizabeth Avedon (former daughter-in-law of Richard) Selkirk recalled his time there; affirming how Flowers was ‘a big name’ in the London photography scene from the 1950’s through to the early 90’s. Flowers’ studio was ‘the place to be photographed’ for advertising and editorials, and for actors, celebrities and artists.
While working at Tite Street in 1968 and the following year, Selkirk assisted Flowers with a number of advertising jobs, including trips to France and Italy, and photographing products, even Christmas puddings. He explained how photographs taken in London were sent to New York, to be converted into dye-transfer prints, an expensive and technologically advanced method that gave high-quality reproductions for magazine advertisements. At that time there was no dye-transfer lab in London. On one occasion, when a large 15 x 12 inch duplicate transparency, made from a standard 35mm negative, was sent back to the studio, Neil was so impressed, he immediately went in search of a large-format camera capable of making large negatives. At Brunnings, the photography shop in Holborn, he found two such cameras, dating from at least the 1920’s. He bought both cameras, and still has them.
25.9.68 for the Observer magazine. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
Selkirk recalled his time working with Flowers in London with delight and occasional chagrin. One time, the leg of a heavy tripod had unexpectedly slid down and injured his foot. In spite of the pain, and the wound taking a long time to heal, he continued to work, standing behind Adrian, ready to hand over film and equipment as needed. However, Adrian had a habit of stepping backwards when he was working and did so several times, stepping on Selkirk’s injured toe. He looked back in surprise to see his assistant bent over in agony. Selkirk laughed as he recalled this. But even at the Flowers studio, he was ambitious to move on and establish his own career. Through Avedon, he was offered a short-term contract in Paris, to assist Japanese photographer Hiro (Yasuhiro Wakabayashi). A decade earlier, Hiro had himself been an assistant to Avedon. Selkirk requested leave of absence from Tite Street, to work on this project with Hiro. Flowers responded “And what if I say no?”. “In that case”, Selkirk cheerfully replied “I’ll quit”. But Flowers relented and let him go. Back in London, Selkirk, who now admits that he must have been insufferable at the time, describes Flowers addressing him in quiet desperation “I know you’ve worked with the most famous photographers in the world, but would you mind passing the film holder”. In stories such as this, Selkirk revealed a self-awareness and self-deprecating sense of humour. “I’m sure I was impossible”, he acknowledges.
The shoots he worked on included trips to Malmaison, outside Paris, and to the Medici palazzos in Florence; both for the Observer magazine. Also for the Observer Selkirk accompanied Flowers to Bonn and Vienna to assist on the Beethoven feature [see previous blog post on this site].
Beethoven’s last piano, photographed by Adrian Flowers in Bonn, Nov. 1969 for the Observer magazine
Selkirk also worked on several of the early Benson & Hedges ads, the ‘Gold Box’ years.
1968 B&H for Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP) Photography: Adrian Flowers
Another memorable job was for the book cover of Len Deighton’s An Expensive Place to Die, art directed by Ray Hawkey [see previous blog posts on Deighton and Hawkey]
JN6102 September 1968 Book cover for An Expensive Place to Die by Len Deighton. Photograph by Adrian Flowers
However, in London, Selkirk was earning just two pounds and ten shillings a week as an assistant at the Flowers studio and knew he had to move on. Working at Hiro’s studio in 1970 and ‘71 had led to further opportunities; while there, he met Diane Arbus and her friend and collaborator Marvin Israel. Arbus invited Selkirk to participate in a master class she was giving. He was more than just a student; at that time Arbus was looking to move on from working in the 2¼ square format, and was researching larger format cameras. Hiro had been using one of the first Pentax 6 x 7 cameras, which took the 120 film Arbus was experienced with, but produced larger images. Familiar with this camera, Selkirk showed her how to use it. After working at Hiro’s until July of that year, he then went to work for fashion photographer Chris Von Wangenheim. This brought him back to Europe, to Rome and Paris. While in Paris, he learned of the death of Arbus, and wrote a letter of commiseration to Marvin Israel. He also offered his services, should a book or exhibition be organised in the future.
Back in New York, Selkirk immediately was put to work by Marvin Israel, working on the forthcoming Arbus exhibition to be shown at MoMA, and on the monograph “Diane Arbus”. He jumped at the opportunity, however he was faced with an intimidating task: Arbus had never labelled or dated her prints. Selkirk was baffled as to how she found a negative. She evidently had a system, but only she knew where things were. Selkirk’s work making prints for the 1972 book and show were intended to be a one-time project, but evolved over the years into his being the only person ever authorized by the estate to make prints from Arbus’s negatives.
For many years now, Selkirk has worked with Doon, eldest daughter of Diane Arbus, who manages her mother’s estate. They periodically are involved in organising exhibitions such as the recent one, entitled “Cataclysm” at the David Zwirner Gallery, that reprised the 1972 MoMA show. The accompanying publication, Diane Arbus Documents a massive tome of several hundred pages, contains Fifty years or more of reviews and essays by Susan Sontag and others, along with an extensive bibliography. It is co-published by Zwirner and the Fraenkel Gallery, with David’s son Lucas guiding it through many stages of development. Doon is also a writer, and in addition to producing books of her mother’s work, has collaborated with Richard Avedon on many projects, including The Sixties, and has recently published her first novel, The Caretaker.
There was a pause in the conversation as Selkirk put a log in the wood-burning stove that added a bright touch and warmed the apartment. Beside the stove was a stack of split wood logs. “The difficulty”, said Neil, “is getting the logs all the way from my place in upstate New York to this room, they’re so heavy!”
In his last years at the old mill – the moulin, in France, Adrian Flowers would often photograph logs from the wood stack. He would set them up in rows outside the barn. Lit by the evening sun, each log acquired its own personality. The photographs were like distant memories of the actors, artists and celebrities who had visited the studio at Tite Street half a century before.
