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A quite focus on the relevant
Since the 1950s, she has been known as one the of the most important portrait photographers in the UK: Jane Bown, born in 1925 in Dorset. She’s portrayed all the important personalities of her time: artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney, actors and directors such as Woody Allen and Dennis Hopper, fashion designers like Vivienne Westwood, musicians such as the Beatles and Björk, and important political figures including Richard Nixon, Margaret Thatcher, and the Queen. Her more than 60-year long working relationship with the Observer began with her first portrait in 1949 of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. His distinctive profile, giving off a silent pride, emerges from an abstract background in black and white contrast.
All of her portraits exhibit a high degree of focus. Her simple technical means have not changed until today: no artificial light, no requisites, no assistant, no color. She does not even use a light meter.
“I always look at the light on the back of my hand and calculate it that way.” Starting out with a Rollei, then a Pentax, and finally landing on an Olympus she still uses today, she developed her own distinctive style. She concentrates on a person’s head, above all on their eyes, and isolates them in front of a vague background. She has perfected her minimalist photography over time to achieve technical and compositional completeness.
In one of her rare interviews Jane Bown was asked if she agrees with Richard Avedon that most photography is very precise, but doesn’t tell the truth. After hesitating a bit she said: “I think my pictures do.”
According to her own understanding, the photographer should always be invisible and be able to catch the right moment: “The best pictures come from the unforeseen. They suddenly appear out of nowhere. One moment they are there, the next they are gone. It is very simple to take a picture, but it is very difficult to make a good photograph.” She would do anything to catch that good photograph, as was the case with Richard Nixon: The assignment came in late and all other journalists were already there, blocking her view. There was nothing left other than to get down on her knees and shoot the image from this position. The first one didn’t work out. Nixon asked: “Do you have it?” She said no. He posed again and asked: “Do you have it?” And then she got it.
Most of the time she had only ten minutes to take pictures, something which requires precision, perception, and for a shy person like Jane Bown, a high degree of determination. When she met Dennis Hopper 1982 at the Savoy Hotel, she marched straight to his room and took stock of the situation. Within seconds she came up with her idea for the picture and within a few attempts, she had the portrait: The actor, in a hat, smoking in front of a mirror. Samuel Beckett had wanted to cancel their appointment due to a lack of time, but Bown didn’t allow him to shake her off so easily and caught him at the stage exit. Within only five shots she captured one of the most memorable portraits of him that’s ever been made. Her work reached critical acclaim in 1995, when the National Portrait Gallery had a show and catalogue of her work, titled “The Gentle Eye.” In 1995 she also received the British Order of Merit for her exceptional achievements in photography. Various publications document her work, including a coffee table book titled “Faces” from 2000.
Geraldine Blum
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