Norman Parkinson 1913-1990

Provenance: given by Elisabeth Frink to owner

Literature: Life Magazine, October 1763

Norman Parkinson began his career as a photographer’s apprentice at Speaight & Son. In 1941 Parkinson’s work featured in Vogue, a relationship which would continue in the decades to come. He had photographed many well-known people, including the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and the Royal family. After the death of Cecil Beaton, he became the official photographer to the Royal Family. He is renowned for not posing his models in an interior studio space but instead bringing them into dynamic settings, as is witness in the photographs included in this collection. His career took place over seven decades in which he reinvented portrait and fashion photography.

On the 18th of October 1963, Elisabeth Frink’s studio was appeared as a background in Life Magazine to celebrate the launch of British fashion designers to an American audience for the first time. Norman Parkinson shot various photographs in the streets of London stating “they’re not mad. They are just irreverent, out to shake up traditional British fashion”. Frink’s Fleming Close studio was the composition of some of the photographs, Parkinson took for the article. The model can be seen posing on the other side of a window, onto which Frink has drawn. This copy is signed by Norman Parkinson and will be shown alongside negatives of other photographs of Frink from this photoshoot.