I was fortunate that the senior
school I attended in Harrogate, Yorkshire provided me with the option of photography
classes. Not being particularly blessed with the technical ability to draw or
illustrate anything to a satisfying standard, I looked to photography to
indulge a love for the visual arts. Armed with a Pentax SLR camera I’d wander
the adjacent town landscape looking for people or objects to photograph and
return to the school photography darkroom to mix up chemicals and anticipate
the imagery emerging before the eyes. The process appeared alchemical, a
surreal magical experience. Years later I purchased from the widow of
professional photographer in Bognor Regis, W. Sussex an antiquated photographic
developing kit. I would set up a temporary darkroom in the bathroom of my
home in Yorkshire. Not very practical with two young children wanting to
bathe or use the lavatory, so I joined a photographic group in York called
Impressions. Upstairs there had been an art gallery, down in the basement were
facilities to develop and experiment in photography to your heart’s content.
Impressions staged an exhibition on the Welsh surrealist photographer Angus
McBean - Immediately I became a fan of his work.
Angus McBean was born in
Newbridge, Monmouthshire, S.Wales in 1904. The son of a coal mine surveyor
McBean purchased his first camera, an autographic Kodak and tripod. Intrigued
by the seemingly magical properties of photography aiming to take photographs
of people McBean sold a gold watch given to him by his grandfather to raise
five pounds to buy the necessary equipment.
In 1925 after his father's
premature death, McBean relocated with his mother and younger sister to
Acton, London. Employed as a furniture restorer by Liberty's department store
in the antiques department privately he indulged his love of photography,
mask-making and going to the theatre in London’s West End. In 1932 McBean
left Liberty and grew a distinctive beard that symbolized the fact that he
would never be a wage-slave again. McBean worked as a maker of theatrical props,
including a commission of medieval scenery for John Gielgud's 1933 production
of Richard of Bordeaux.
McBean's masks became a topic
of conversation in social columns and soon attracted the attention of leading
Bond Street photographer Hugh Cecil. Cecil offered McBean an assistant's post
at his Mayfair studio. After 18 months having learnt the secrets of Cecil's
softer style and having had the facility to use the studio at night McBean went
on to establish his own studio in a basement in Belgrave Road, Victoria,
London.
McBean, still primarily known
as a mask maker, gained a commission in 1936 from Ivor Novello for masks for
his play The Happy Hypocrite.
Novello was so impressed with McBean's romantic photographs that he commissioned
him to take a set of production photographs that included the young actress
Vivien Leigh. The photographs taken on stage with McBean's idiosyncratic
lighting, so impressed they immediately replaced the set made by the established
but stolid Stage Photo Company. Instantly McBean created a new career and in
Vivien Leigh had a charismatic photographic leading lady. McBean was to
photograph Vivien Leigh on stage and in the studio for almost every
performance until her death thirty years later.
McBean established a reputation
as one of the most significant portrait photographers of the 20th century,
and specifically as a noted photographer of celebrities. In 1942 McBean’s
career was temporarily derailed when he was arrested in Bath for criminal
acts of homosexuality. He was sentenced to four years in prison and was
released in the autumn of 1944. After the Second World War McBean set about
re-establishing his photographic career.
Effectively there were two
periods to McBean’s career - pre and post war phases. Pre-war he was a lot
more self-assured and experimented expertly with surrealism, indeed the work he
created with Vivian Leigh are some of the most amazing surrealist
photographic images known. Post war he reverted to a more regular style of
portraiture photography working predominantly in entertainment and theatre.
In 1945, uncertain of whether
he would find work again, McBean built a new studio in a bomb-damaged
building in Endell Street, Covent Garden. He sold his Soho camera for £35,
and bought a new half-plate Kodak View monorail camera to which he attached
his trusted Zeiss lenses. McBean was commissioned first by the Stratford
Memorial Theatre to photograph a production of Anthony and Cleopatra,
and all his former clients quickly returned. Through the late 1940s and 50s
he was the official photographer at Stratford, the Royal Opera House, Sadlers
Wells, Glyndebourne, the Old Vic and at all the productions of H.M. Tennent,
creating images for theatre, music and ballet productions. Magazines such as
the Daily Sketch and Tatler vied to commission McBean's new series of surreal
portraits.
McBean's later works famously included
being the photographer for The Beatles' first album, surrealist work and classic
photographs of individuals such as Agatha Christie, Audrey Hepburn, Laurence
Olivier and Noel Coward. McBean inspired and appeared in the David Sylvian
video Red Guitar. McBean died on June 9th, 1990
There is a comprehensive
biography, Face –maker by Adrian
Woodhouse published by Alma Books (2006).
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Angus McBean (c) estate of Angus McBean
(c) 2012 Steve Parry (Photo - Taken from DARK book edition)
