Face to Face AUTUMN 2008 Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990 – 2005 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008 Four Great Portraits My Favourite Portrait by Bill Morris From the Director The Gallery has this year the opportunity to acquire four exceptional portraits for the Collection: Lady Dacre and her son by Hans Eworth – an outstanding and well preserved Tudor portrait; Sir Richard Arkwright by Joseph Wright of Derby (left and cover) – a towering figure in the British Industrial Revolution; Mary Seacole by Albert Challen – a remarkable individual in terms of nineteenth-century army healthcare; and finally Marc Quinn’s Self – the latest of the artist’s self-portrait images, created out of his own blood and frozen. While the Gallery is familiar with raising extra resources for one special portrait at a time, as with the successful appeals for the portraits of John Donne in 2006 or John Fletcher in 2007, these four potential acquisitions pose a great challenge for us. We COVER AND ABOVE Sir Richard Arkwright have some funding already secured, including generous support from the Art Fund by Joseph Wright of Derby, and a contribution from the Gallery’s Portrait Fund, and we are making application to c.1783–85 appropriate external bodies. However, this will leave us with a shortfall and we need substantial help to ensure that we secure these important works for the nation. If you are interested in donating, please contact Emma Black, Individual Giving Manager, on 020 7312 2444 or email her on [email protected]. The article in this issue of Face to Face gives more information. In October we open Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005. Her previous monographic exhibition was a great success at the Gallery in 1993, and a number of classic Leibovitz images were included in the recent Vanity Fair Portraits. But this exhibition marks a difference by combining the best of her public editorial images with personal, intimate portraits of her family and close friends. This autumn we are delighted to relaunch the Photographic Portrait Prize with the new sponsors, Taylor Wessing. The law firm has been a great supporter of the Gallery for a number of years, sponsoring the successful World’s Most Photographed in 2005 and co-sponsoring the recent Face of Fashion exhibition in 2007. I will be chairing the jury to seek out the very best photographic portraits of the many submitted from around the world. I am also pleased that the current building and lift works will give full access to our landing space, off the front staircase. The Gallery will finally be fully accessible and everyone will be able to enjoy the interesting displays on the landing. Currently on display are Portraits of the 1970s, a selection of recently donated photographs by the American photographer Bern Schwartz. Sandy Nairne DIRECTOR As Director of the London MY FAVOURITE Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, Bill is responsible PORTRAIT for all the London 2012 ceremonies BILL MORRIS including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the Torch Relay. He is also in charge of the Cultural Olympiad, the London 2012 Education programme and the network of Live Sites being established around the UK. IT WAS EXQUISITE TORTURE, trying to pick out just Through this confusion over the medium, Brooks ABOVE one portrait for this article. The collection of great instantly propels us into questioning portraiture, Bill Morris Olympians and Paralympians was an obvious target, begging us to examine this sitter. The cinematic LEFT and the multi-media portraits of Sir Steve Redgrave crop of the face, and the shallow depth of field, are Sir Paul Nurse nearly won me over. The most striking photograph deliberate photographic techniques Brooks has by Jason Brooks, 2008 of Denise Lewis was incredibly beguiling too – her employed to highlight the electrifying eyes of Commissioned by the National statuesque physique and the most penetrating of this man. You are drawn to Nurse through the Portrait Gallery with the support stares that told you everything about medal winning. searing intellect and the unshakeable determination of JPMorgan through the Fund emanating from these eyes. for New Commissions It makes you reflect on the profound difference This work currently features in between the ubiquity of digital photography and the Nurse has been painted with every bristle on display, Jason Brooks: Portraits on display revealing brilliance of true portraiture. The first is often delivering a ‘what you see is what you get’ feeling. in Room 40. An interview with the a poor copy of the original whilst the second interprets This is what excites me about all of these portraits, artist can be seen in this issue. the inner self of the subject and the artist. So what these renowned figures, famous for their astonishing did I choose – and why? achievements, but so devoid of the cult of the celebrity image. This is where art plays a great role As soon as I saw it, I was compelled by the arresting in the lead-up to the London 2012 Games. These commission of Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Prize winner, works stretch the understanding and limitations of painted by Jason Brooks. From a distance it tricks portraiture, delving deeper to illuminate something you into believing that it is an engaging black and more of the passion and motivation of the great white photograph. On closer inspection, you have to sitters, exactly what the Olympiad hopes to inspire. abandon these assumptions, because this is a highly detailed, painstakingly executed painting. Bill Morris DIRECTOR OF CULTURE, CEREMONIES AND EDUCATION, LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC GAMES IF YOU VISITED THE GALLERY in June or July, THE LANDING you would have noticed scaffolding to the left of the ACCESS PROJECT main entrance and perhaps wondered why it was there. It provided the only route (via the roof) to the void between the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery buildings, in which a link corridor was being built between the lift and Room 33, the first-floor landing. The landing, which forms part of the original Victorian staircase, was the only part of the Gallery not accessible by lift. This had meant it was impossible for some visitors with mobility problems to see the exhibitions there, such as the recent Yousuf Karsh and Diana, Princess of Wales photographs. Thanks to the receipt of grants from the DCMS/Wolfson Fund and the H.B. Allen Trust, together with some of our own money, we have been able to tackle this interesting but challenging building project. With minimal disruption to the daily work of the Gallery, Killby and Gayford, who were appointed as contractors, built a corridor between the landing and the lift. The photograph (right) shows them the lift LEFT under construction. A flat roof, with sophisticated Work in progress on the new lift, detection monitors, will complete the project, which which will provide access to is due to be finished by the end of August. Room 33, the first-floor landing. Judith West HEAD OF RESOURCES ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: A PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIFE, 1990–2005 16 October 2008 – 25 January 2009 Wolfson Gallery and selected Lerner Galleries Admission charge Organised by the Brooklyn Museum Sponsored by American Express London Sponsors: Bridgepoint and GAP RIGHT ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: A PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIFE, Close and Cindy Sherman. Highlights include dancers Susan Sontag at Petra, 1990–2005 will draw together for the first time Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rob Besserer holding a Jordan, 1994 the well-known assignments and rarely seen personal dance position on a beach, William S. Burroughs in by Annie Leibovitz work of one of the world’s best-known portrait Kansas and Agnes Martin in Taos. Photograph © Annie Leibovitz photographers. FROM ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Featured assignment work includes searing reportage A PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIFE, With over 150 photographs, the exhibition shows from the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s and 1990–2005 iconic images of famous public figures together with the election of Hillary Clinton to the US Senate. personal photographs of her family and close friends. There are also landscapes taken in Monument Arranged chronologically, they project a unified Valley in the American West and in Wadi Rum in narrative of the artist’s private life against the the Jordanian desert. backdrop of her public image. ‘I don’t have two lives,’ Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005 is Leibovitz says. ‘This is one life, and the personal a Brooklyn Museum exhibition, curated by Charlotta pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.’ Kotik, Curator Emerita of Contemporary Art. The At the heart of the exhibition, Leibovitz’s personal exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum on photography documents scenes from her life, 20 October 2006 and has since toured to the San including the birth and childhood of her three Diego Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in daughters, her holidays, reunions, and rites of Atlanta, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C., and passage with her parents, her extended family and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. It is now close friends. on tour at La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris before arriving in London, and after the The exhibition features Leibovitz’s portraits of well- National Portrait Gallery, the exhibition will tour known figures, including actors such as Jamie Foxx, to C/O Berlin. Daniel Day Lewis, Al Pacino, Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt as well as artists and architects such as Neil Evans Richard Avedon, Brice Marden, Philip Johnson, Chuck SENIOR PRESS OFFICER LEFT Philip Johnson, Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, 2000 by Annie Leibovitz Sarajevo: Fallen bicycle of teenage boy just killed by a sniper, 1994 by Annie Leibovitz Both photographs © Annie Leibovitz FROM ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: A PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIFE, 1990–2005 ‘WHAT I’M DOING AS A PHOTOGRAPHER IS GETTING A LITTLE TINY SLICE OF THEM.