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Born in Blackheath in 1937, the actor and activist Vanessa Redgrave comes from a family already famous in the world of stage and screen. The daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, and sister of Colin and Lynn Redgrave, after studying at the Central School of Speech and Drama, in 1958 she made her stage debut in A Touch of Sun. The following year she appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and two years later was widely praised for her portrayal of Rosalind in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s productions of As You Like It.In 1962, still a rising star in the world of theatre, and by now married to the film director Tony Richardson, Redgrave played Imogen in Cymbeline, directed by Bill Gaskill for the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre. That year she featured in Mademoiselle magazine in the United State, with photographs by Sandra Lousada and was also on the cover of the June 4th international issue of Life magazine, dressed for her role as Rosalind.
On Monday 22nd January 1962, Redgrave’s name appears in the studio diary of the Adrian Flowers studio: “7.30 Flair Vanessa Redgrave 13 Grenvill Pl FRE2591 . . pale yellow walls blue velvet dress”. Judging by the entry, the appointment was for a planned article in Flair magazine. While bearing the same name as the magazine founded by Fleur Fenton Cowles in 1950, the Flair magazine for which Adrian Flowers photographed Redgrave was a quite separate publication, specializing in fashion and beauty as well as feature articles. The diary entry indicates that the photograph session was to take place in Kensington; 13 Grenville Place is just north of Cromwell Road. The twelve photographs taken that evening are all informal, with Redgrave laughing, chatting and posing for the camera. While contact sheet 4169 consists of three strips of four images, making a total of twelve, one of the original negative strips is missing from the AF Archive—perhaps because it was sent to Flair magazine.
photographed by Adrian Flowers
The images are beguiling. A seasoned professional, Redgrave is both relaxed and also aware of the camera, turning her head, smiling, and radiating confidence and a warm human spirit. Since infancy, she had been photographed by some of the top names in photography, including Angus McBean, Yousuf Karsh, George Konig, Paul Tanqueray, and, in 1962, by Tony Eyles. Seven of the photographs by Adrian Flowers are head and shoulders, while the rest show her dressed in a high-necked shirt, with dark slacks and stockinged feet, sitting informally on a couch, legs crossed or feet resting on a low table. She wears no jewellery, little make-up, and her abundant hair is pinned back with a hairclip. The couch has sheets draped over it, to conceal the brightly patterned fabric. In several, she is smoking a cigarette. The background is a plain wall.In a period when portrait photography emphasized fashion, make-up and accessories, these photographs by Adrian Flowers stand out as a record of the person Vanessa Redgrave, direct, honest and fearless, rather than portraying her as a star of stage and screen.
Text: Peter Murray
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©
PHOTO TECHNIQUE July 1975
Among the many assistants who worked for Adrian Flowers over the years, Bob Cramp is one of several who stand out as photographers in their own right. Cramp began working in the studio around 1965. Initially he was a ‘first assistant’, tasked with helping Adrian. Soon however, he was showing more initiative, greeting clients, and discussing the shoot. Eventually he was setting up everything for the shoot. Understandably, Adrian began to place increasing confidence in Cramp, relying on him to take care of the difficult parts of a job, and coming to the studio when the photograph was ready to be taken. As soon as this was completed, Adrian and the client would go to lunch, while Cramp remained in the studio, supervising the development of the film. After a review of the negatives in the afternoon, there might be a final shoot. In addition to this work, Cramp took his own photographs, and in a series of negatives dating from 1967, Ann Mallett and two other assistants appear larking about, dressed in cowboy costumes—the costumes were from an advertising shoot for the clothing firm Acrilan and Borg. Eventually, both Adrian and Cramp agreed it was time for change, and so, with Adrian’s blessing and with Smirnoff as his first client, Cramp set up his own studio.
at Adrian Flowers studio.
Photograph by Adrian’s assistant Bob Cramp
Photograph by Adrian Flowers
It was during Cramp’s time at the studio, that Ann Mallett (Kirsop at the time) had been interviewed for the job of second assistant. She had secured the interview through Jonathan Reynolds, a friend of her brother’s, who was working for Adrian at the time. Mallett was nineteen years old, and remembers the experience as a bit overwhelming, as, carrying her art portfolio, she was ushered into the room and asked to sit on a large Chesterfield sofa. Although Mallett had no formal art training, she was a keen semi-professional artist, who specialised in finely-drawn portraits. Her portfolio was whisked away by Ray Hawkey, who went through her drawings, while Adrian, sitting in a vintage dentist’s chair—one of the more eccentric features of the Tite Street studios—quizzed Mallett as to her qualifications for becoming an assistant photographer. Mallett recalls little of what was said, her attention being drawn to the large tank, full of tropical fish, that was Adrian’s pride and joy. Hawkey then returned and had a quiet word with Adrian, commending her artwork. She got the job.
This involved working in the dark room, and she recalls Aubrey Rix giving her a roll of film to develop, on the strict understanding that its contents were not to be disclosed to anyone. Apparently, the roll of film contained images of frolics involving Britt Ekland, Peter Sellers and Lord Snowdon. Mallett worked on several shoots for ad campaigns, including one for brandy. She remembers other employees at the studio, including “the fabulous Mrs. Wines, a real character”. Working at the studio inevitably led to relationships, and in spite of Adrian’s disapproval, Mallet and studio printer Alan Blake got together, and Adrian attended their wedding.
After a disagreement with another employee at the studio, Seigfried Kerson, who took it upon himself to act as a HR manager, both Blake and Mallett left. Initially they worked in Germany, before returning to England, where Mallett worked at an advertising studio in Merton. She and Blake then raised a family.
She recalls with tremendous affection working at the Adrian Flowers studio at Tite Street, the years there being “some of the most memorable and exciting of my life—we all loved Uncle Ade”.
Text: Peter Murray
with thanks to Ann Mallett
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©
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.
Photograph by Adrian Flowers
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!!
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.
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.
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.
Text: Tor Hildard
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©
Dated July 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.
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’.
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.
The coffee bar phenomenon in London and other British cities attracted a huge amount of media attention, “and in August 1954, Picture Post ran a feature “A Red-head in Search of Black Coffee” in which Adrienne Corri, promoting her film Make Me an Offer, visited coffee bars in London, including the Moulin Rouge at 38 Hanway Street. It was during this tour that Adrian photographed Corri and Angela Flowers together, and his photographs were used in the Picture Post article.
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.
Chiquitos, which was at 32
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’.
Text: Peter Murray
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©
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.
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, 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’.
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.
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.
Text: Peter Murray
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©
8.11.19 – 13.02.10
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Text: Peter Murray
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©
15.12.30 – 27.7.2024
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.
The Arts In Ireland, June 1975 Volume 3, No. 2
Text: Peter Murray
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©
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.
Text: Peter Murray
Editor: Francesca Flowers
All images subject to copyright.
Adrian Flowers Archive ©