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Adrian Flowers in India 1963

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 ©

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Advertising agency work Editorial

Adrian Flowers in Kericho, Kenya, 1963

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. 

Text: Peter Murray

Editor: Francesca Flowers

All images subject to copyright.

Adrian Flowers Archive ©

Categories
Adrian Flowers Studio Editorial

Adrian Flowers and the Observer magazine

Beginning in 1967, Adrian Flowers received the first of many commissions to photograph covers for the Observer magazine. For journalist Hilda Hunter, a specialist on rare animals, he provided suitably regal images of a Rex cat, while for an feature by Maureen Green, marking the anniversary of women getting the vote, he photographed a group of veteran Suffragette campaigners, standing with banners for ‘Womens Freedom League’ and ‘National Union of Womens Suffrage Societies’. The veterans included Stella Newsome, Grace Roe, Lady Winstead, Beryl Bower, Mrs. Duval (Una Dugdale), Dame Kathleen Courtney, Jessie Kenny and Mary Stocks. During the shoot, Adrian’s assistant Bob Cramp recalled the women swapping stories of how they had flouted the law in their youth.

5th December 1967 reunion of the Suffragettes
Bald Rex Cat for the Observer 1968

Most of the Observer commissions came to Adrian via Raymond Hawkey, who had been appointed head graphic designer at the newspaper the previous year. Renowned for his use of bold graphic images and san serif fonts, Hawkey is perhaps best-remembered for his series of memorable covers for the 1960’s Pan paperback series of James Bond novels. The Observer commissions he brought to Adrian were wide-ranging. A close-up of a hand grenade dominated the magazine’s front cover for 11 June 1967: “Aden: the shattering end of Britain’s love affair with Arabia”. For a feature on ‘the shape of schools to come’ (2 July 1967) Adrian photographed a school satchel, containing magnetic tapes, a Stillitron and other futuristic learning aids, alongside conventional pencils and paper. Partly hidden behind a headphone set, a ‘Wild Flowers’ cigarette card provided a classic Adrian Flowers signature touch. The following week’s cover featured a close-up of a golf ball, for ‘The World of King Caddie’, while a breakfast fry-up, with coffee in an enamel mug, provided an apt image, on 27 August, for ‘Gourmets’ Guide to Transport Cafés’. On 17 September, a disconsolate bride in a dustbin, veiled and still holding her bouquet, was an arresting, and Beckettian, image for ‘Are we the last married generation?’. These images captured the essence of Britain’s fast-rising middle class, who shared disenchantment with a colonial past, fascination with new technology, and who welcomed the blurring of social identities.

A selection of the Observer covers photographed by Adrian Flowers in 1967

Hawkey created a visual language that expressed the tenor of an age, one in which confidence and insecurity vied for dominance. Influenced by American designers and photographers such as Saul Bass, Herb Lubalin, Alexander Liberman, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, his own career reflected these shifts in society; after a childhood in Cornwall, he attended art college in Plymouth, winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. At the RCA, along with Len Deighton, he was art editor for Ark, the college magazine, causing a minor scandal by featuring a nude photograph on the front cover—photography was disapproved of at the Royal College. Adrian Flowers was also a friend of Deighton, having met him in 1947 while both trained as photographers with the RAF. Following success in a competition run by Vogue magazine, Hawkey worked for its publishers, Condé Nast, for several years. He then moved on to the Daily Express, before becoming head designer at the Observer, where he revitalised the colour magazine that came with the newspaper. The easing up of newsprint rationing in the late 1950’s enabled newspapers to expand and develop, and the Observer caught the spirit of the times. Although he was nattily-dressed, soft spoken and invariably polite, Hawkey’s imagery could be shocking and at times disturbing. Len Deighton asked him to design front covers for his novels, including The Ipcress File, with Adrian providing images for Hawkey to use in designs for several of these novels. 

Deighton Dossier includes a chapter on Photography written by Adrian Flowers
www.deightondossier.net

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/apr/12/from-the-observer-archive-morecambe-and-wise-kenneth-tynan

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/29/from-the-archive-britains-national-traffic-jam-in-1971

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/oct/13/from-the-archive-1967-western-journalist-under-arrest-in-china-for-777-days

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/from-the-observer-archive

Image of the Suffragettes was used in Diane Atkinson’s 2018 book Rise up, Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes. www.dianeatkinson.co.uk

Text: Peter Murray

Editor: Francesca Flowers

All images subject to copyright.

Adrian Flowers Archive ©

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Adrian Flowers Studio Portraits

Adrian Flowers: an appreciation

by Matthew Flowers

Adrian with his three sons: (l-r) Matthew, Daniel, Adam

He was eccentric. To the extent that when I was born in 1956, two weeks late and almost 10 pounds, Adrian’s primary concern at the birth was getting a good sound recording of the action. Despite the fact that I was silent on arrival, my mother was certainly not, when she brought me into this world. As soon as things had calmed down in the kitchen of England’s Lane, Haverstock Hill, above the electrical shop, Adrian’s first inclination was to go upstairs and relive the experience through the recording.

Like many of us, Adrian was full of contradictions. A man who expressed zero interest in sport, yet was quietly, and highly, competitive. He ensured we always had the biggest firework displays amongst our friends. When I was 7 he visited me at boarding school on sports day. Consuming biscuits as part of a race against parents to see who could eat the quickest, he made sure he won. But as with all Flowers, he would never leave a plate with food left on it anyway.

Adrian had a lifelong interest in music, particularly jazz, and he was an exceptional talent at the piano. At Sherborne, the headmaster reported to his father Edward that Adrian was distracted from his academic studies by his interest in playing the piano. Edward had already been disappointed by the vocational fate of Geoffrey, Adrian’s brother, who became a piano teacher, organist and composer. Edward advised the headmaster to put a stop to Adrian’s piano playing. Adrian made up for that disappointment by facilitating and encouraging all four of his children to become fine musicians themselves.

He loved cats. There was always at least one cat in all of his households. But the greatest animal love of his life was Sarah the dog, a beautiful Labrador-boxer whose football skills matched George Best and who was the subject of many photographic portraits. Named after the jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, Sarah was the catalyst to Adrian’s other great pastime – walking and talking on Hampstead Heath. He instigated a Sunday morning tradition of walks on the Heath with Sarah and any family that was around.

Sarah “fastest footballing dog”

After the walks were yet more talks. Adrian gathered many artist friends to our house on Patshull Road later on Sundays. He had a love of British constructivist art – Kenneth Martin, Anthony Hill, John Ernest, Victor Pasmore. He placed sculpture by Denis Mitchell and Brian Wall in our house. When Adrian rubbed the tall metal curve of the Mitchell piece, money would mysteriously fall to the floor. I have less fond memories of Brian Wall’s heavy steel construction. One day a strong friend of Adam’s tied a rope through its metal bars, pulled it to the floor, catching the end of my foot in the process and breaking my toe.
A happier memory from my childhood was the game Adrian played with us loosely titled “Sit Still.” We were called to Adrian’s lap to sit perfectly still on his knee otherwise we’d be dropped to the floor. Somehow, we all always ended up on the floor.

He believed in the power of advertising and was sometimes obsessive in pursuit of the perfect image. When commissioned for what I recall was a legwear advertisement, he searched long and hard for the “ideal knees,” and had countless women in his studio showing him their legs, none of which fit the bill. In exasperation he finally asked his assistant Gala to show him her knees, and had his Eureka moment that the perfect knees were right in front of him. Gala’s knees became the subject of a famous postcard commissioned by Angela Flowers Gallery for their 1971 postcard exhibition.

We were often the beneficiaries of the props leftover from Adrian’s sets. When Adrian would do cigarette ads, he would come home with cartons of cigarettes, which Dan and I would steal on a regular basis. He once did an ad for an ice cream company that had 32 different flavors. He created a photograph of 4 cones, each with 8 scoops of ice cream on it. He brought home the remaining ice cream from the set to our delight.

A little known passion of his was boating. His childhood in Portsmouth was a likely start for this. When I was about seven he bought a boat called Edith 2. Our family took a memorable trip on her from London up the Thames to Pangbourne. He took Edith 2 from London to Mill Cove, county Cork, in the late 60s. Edith 2 had an inbuilt motor which made the boat heavy. I was charged with going down at dawn to bail out any overnight water ingress. When I got there, there was no sign of Edith. She had sunk to the bottom of the cove. On another boat, I spent a week on the Norfolk Broads with him during the summer of 1973. It was a happy trip for me.

Over the years Adrian had many Alvis cars, culminating in two giant saloons, both blue. The reason he had two was that one was always in the garage being fixed. Soon after I passed my driving test I was allowed to drive one on my own. It was like driving a tank.
He idolized his three siblings, all of whom were significantly older than him. He only got to know some of his nieces and nephews as adults, many of whom visited him here in France.
He came to France in 1996, with Françoise. He loved the sun, good food, and a quieter life than London. He never learned French.

The Moulin allowed him the opportunity to create his archive in the famous barn, with the help of Brian Durling, who is here today. The barn was the culmination of his life’s work. It was Adrian’s personal museum, library, oasis, office, studio, escape, home, legacy and spirit. He cherished every single item in the barn, from his rare vintage cameras, lights, tripods, scaffolding, magazine and newspaper collections, set props, preparatory materials from adverts, negatives, transparencies, polaroids, prints, printing equipment, posters, artworks, video tapes, books, portfolios, objects that he wanted to photograph, like old metal, tree trunks, pieces of wood, rotting fruits. Nothing escaped his eye, and nothing escaped from the barn. He was fiercely protective of its contents. On many occasions over the last ten years I tried to borrow various items with a view to formally cataloguing his remarkable career and rare archive. He was insistent that nothing be removed, dismantled or dispersed for any purpose by anyone.

Adrian Flowers film by Luke Tomlinson

Over the last week I’ve had many kind messages from people who have known Adrian. Len Deighton who knew Adrian well through being RAF photographers together just after the second world war, said “I want to assure you that your father was very philosophical about everything. So don’t be sad on his behalf. He will have taken death in his stride, as he did everything else.”

A few memories and reflections others have shared have stood out as well: dentist’s chair, spooky fishtank, end of an era, eccentric individual, individual, master of his Life hobby, profession and innovator extraordinaire, the holder of waddery, all his paperwork, the Stuff Merchant of Tite Street, garages galore, giggling at the Marx brothers, being a great husband, a brilliant father and a wonderful grandfather.

Matt Flowers
May 2016

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Adrian Flowers Studio

The great persuader

Advertising agencies have at last understood that images had to become more interesting to attract the attention of the public. They had to go from the natural to the supernatural, from the real to the surreal, in order to intrigue the onlooker and reach his unconscious in ways which had never been tried before in advertising. These sort of pictures are most effective and have high recall; but usually they are much too costly for the individual to attempt on his own. One would have to resort to painting! Adrian Flowers

Adrian Flowers created images that successfully conveyed the messages intended by advertisers. Often, these concepts originated in the United States, where a large and mobile middle class was being courted and influenced by Madison Avenue firms, operating with a hitherto unheard of sophistication, much of it based on the new science of “Motivational Research”. In his 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard identified, almost for the first time in the wider public realm, the underlying structures, and architecture, of the consumer society. He revealed the widespread use of psychological triggers and subliminal messages in advertising, designed to induce desire amongst buyers, without their being aware of it. Products were no longer straightforward products, but brought with them the promise of higher social status, and new and glamorous lifestyles. With its cover illustration of a bright red apple impaled upon a fish hook, The Hidden Persuaders categorised psychological needs—including weaknesses, fears and anxieties—shared by people, and tracked how these were addressed by advertisers, often in a cynical way. These hidden needs included emotional security, a search for identity, self-gratification, love, sex, power and immortality. Advertisers found that particular colours, such as yellow and red, were effective, as were symbols and logos that had dream-like qualities. 

1972 Benson & Hedges

The techniques used were so effective they often contributed to impulsive and self-destructive behaviour, while also raising company profits. Based on the work of the Austrian-American Ernest Dichter, whose credo was to promote a lifestyle of corporate hedonism, Motivational Research and focus groups were among the methods used to develop brands. However, after Packard’s 1957 exposé, those using MR became more subtle in their approach. Brands were created and manipulated through the use of imagery that often sought to eliminate feelings of guilt in the consumer—at spending money on products that could be seen as indulgent, or even self-destructive, such as cigarettes or alcohol. Advertisers learned to change imagery and messages at will. Gender and gender manipulation was also regularly used. Society was divided into different classes, mainly, but not entirely, depending on income, and the burgeoning middle class became the key target audience for advertisers. Although intended, and read, as a critique of consumer society, Packard’s book had an equal and unintended effect, providing a concise and readable account of how advances in psychological profiling made it easy for advertising companies to earn their keep. Young people going into advertising could read The Hidden Persuaders, and knew instantly what was going on. Predictably, major advertising companies, particularly Ogilvy, cast cold water on Packard’s sensationalist style.

Both MR research and the advertising campaigns that resulted were imported into England during the 1950’s, into a country where class divisions were still largely in place, and where upward mobility was more restricted than in America. But the campaigns were no less successful. Paradoxically, it was in photography and advertising that people from working class backgrounds could often enjoy a new-found freedom and social mobility, and also earn a good living. The cockney photographer portrayed in Antononini’s film Blow Up was based loosely on real-life photographer David Bailey. While Brian Duffy, who worked as an assistant in the Flowers studio, became part of what Norman Parkinson dubbed ‘The Unholy Trinity’, a triad that also included Bailey and Terence Donovan.

In this world, Adrian Flowers occupied an almost unique position, in that his own family heritage included several generations of professional photographers, going back to the late nineteenth century. Flowers’ lifestyle was glamorous, and his studio, in Chelsea’s Tite Street, operated with a degree of professionalism and organisation that was lacking in many other studios in London. At it’s peak, the Adrian Flowers studio was considered the best in the city, and with London one of the world’s centres for advertising, there were good opportunities in the heady days when Motivational Research had turned advertising into a sophisticated and intellectually-driven industry.

“The Football pitch is Balsan” Balsan carpets 1981

Text: Peter Murray

Editor: Francesca Flowers

All images subject to copyright.

Adrian Flowers Archive ©

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Adrian Flowers Studio Introduction

Adrian Flowers

Born in Southsea, Portsmouth, on 11th July 1926, Adrian Flowers went to school in Southampton, before attending Sherborne School. His father Edward was a Lieut Colonel in the Indian Army in WWI, and latterly a businessman, while his mother Kathleen (née West), a violinist and a Christian Scientist, was the daughter of well-known photographer William West. Based in Portsmouth, the firm of George West & Sons had been founded by her great-grandfather. Although he had initially thought to take up medicine, this family background in commercial photography led Adrian to study at the Institute of British Photography. Graduating in 1950, he opened his first studio in Dover Street, before moving to Tite Street in Chelsea. He is best remembered for advertising photography for products such as Benson and Hedges, and also for his portrait work. Assistants who started their careers at the Flowers studio included Terence Donovan, Chris Killip, Neil Selkirk and Brian Duffy. Some of Flowers’ early work was for the magazine Girl, where he photographed film stars—including Dirk Bogarde, Deborah Kerr and Norman Wisdom—meeting fans. His later portrait subjects included Twiggy, Peter Sellers, Paul and Linda McCartney, Michael Caine, Alec Guinness and Vanessa Redgrave

Visiting Cornwall in 1954, with his wife Angela, Flowers was introduced to the artists living and working in St. Ives at that time. His photographs of these artists and their work consolidated his appreciation of the world of fine art but he had to make a living through commercial photography, which came mainly from advertising agencies.

Working for advertising agencies appealed to Flowers’ sense of organisation, where his freedom in translating concepts into images was relatively restricted. He liked studio work, because it allowed him to spend time to set up and think through all aspects of the project, and have control over the conditions that could affect the final image. Rather than taking hundreds of photographs, from which one would be selected that reflected his intention, he preferred to spend time getting things right, then taking just a few exposures to give the result he needed. Although his creative imagination was restricted, in realising the concepts that came to him from commissioning agencies, he did not find these particularly irksome. He enjoyed setting up and photographing objects, investing the images with a playful and surreal sensibility. This surrealist quality is also evident in his more personal, creative work, for example in a series of circular photographs, of round objects. His visual sensibility was to an extent influenced by French photographer and painter Guy Bourdin. Like Bourdin, Flowers was a perfectionist, leaving nothing to chance, and delighting in investing his photographs with a sense of drama. As advertising became more sophisticated, he was able to create images that spoke to the subconscious desires, fears and attractions. Conventional perspectives were disrupted, objects and interiors cropped, narratives suggested, rather than explicitly stated, and when colour was used, it was saturated.

For the Benson and Hedges campaign, commissioned by CDP (Collett Dickenson and Pearce), Flowers spent six months testing images before proceeding with final photography, using an 10 x 8 camera, rather than his usual Sinar 4 x 5. With the elaborate settings and décor, his output for the Benson and Hedges campaign amounted to just one finished photograph a year. He worked with designers and decorators, making sketches and taking Polaroid photos of each stage of the work. A quintessential sense of English middle-class values informs these campaigns, with carpets, wallpaper and ornaments carefully selected to resonate with readers and consumers. Although other photographers also worked on the Benson and Hedges campaign, the photographs best remembered are those taken by Flowers. In another campaign, for Le Creuset cookware, Flowers again photographed this everyday product in unusual, even austere, settings, using accentuated perspectives. This forcing of perspective can be seen at its most extreme in his Kit-Kat photographs. Flowers’ interest in the world of fine art is evident in the Swiss watch campaign, where images of watches are being prepared for exhibition in a contemporary art gallery. In his work for Martell cognac, the narrative is that of an art collector, his wife and daughter visiting the studio of a famous artist. The daughter is attracted to the artist, but does not know that the artist’s lover, the model in his paintings, is hiding behind a screen. In contrast with these product commissions, which involved careful staging, his work with live models frequently resulted in lively and informal images—not least due to the high cost of modelling fees and the need to work at speed.

With the advent of digital photography and the decline of the analogue form, Adrian Flowers retired from commercial work in 1990 and closed his studio. Adrian and Angela divorced by mutual consent in 1973. He re-married, to Françoise Lina in 1985. He moved to France where he continued to work on other projects. He died, aged 89, in France on 18th May 2016.