Nicky Charlish
posted 14 July 2006

The celebrity photographer is someone we either regard as an entertainer or take for granted as a necessary evil in a publicity-conscious age. The idea of one using a disturbing art form to further his work is one that we may find surprising. This exhibition - the first retrospective devoted to the work of Angus McBean, one of the most significant portrait photographers of the last century - helps us to explore this apparent contradiction.

Born in Newport, Wales, in 1904, McBean was stage-struck from an early age. He took up photography as a hobby and - after his father's death in 1924 - gave up his bank job to work in London. After being sacked from working as a salesman in the antiques department of Liberty's in Regent Street, he worked in theatre design and mask-making. He was asked to take photographs of Ivor Novello's production The Happy Hypocrite. They were widely published and his career as a professional photographer had started.

But McBean's photographs would be pictures with a difference. He was an enthusiast for Surrealism, an artform rooted in the idea of art that was the product of the dictation of thought, free from the exercise of reason and every aesthetic or moral preoccupation. By exalting the irrational dictates of the subconscious mind or vision it did, in effect, raise two fingers to virtually all political theory and religious philosophy. But its Continental begetters failed to take into account the English love of whimsy. The supporters of Surrealism might take its much-vaunted chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table as a threat, but the English would view it as a right old giggle.

McBean didn't see Surrealism in quite that way, but he used it instead as a springboard for being entertaining. It soon showed in his work. We see a photograph of Hollywood actress Lupe Velez (1936), looking down more sad than demure, but this is a standard pose, and there is no trick work. But - from the same year - we have a photograph of actor Leslie Henson in Running Riot at London's Gaiety Theatre. He's not so much a rioter as a screamer, emerging from rolling waves as he offers-up, with a supremely camp gesture, a stoical seagull which seems surprisingly calm about the whole business. And two years later we have a photograph of actress Dorothy Dixon showing just her head which is reflected in a pond, giving her a far more more imperious expression. This reflection is surrounded by leaves, giving a quasi art nouveau effect. We see theatre critic James Agate in a photograph from 1947 with, as a backdrop, a playbill from 1877 (the year of his birth) a newspaper and magazine nearby and a look of puzzlement on his face, as if he's wondering whether being a critic is worth it or has any usefulness. Three years later we see the queen of crime novelists Agatha Christie with her head surrounded by weapons and a poison bottle which form a halo. Her expression is one of a tough equanimity, undisturbed by the outward and visible signs of murder, as if death is what she expects from life. From the following year comes the photograph of another crime novelist, Nancy Spain. Near her she, too, has the tools of the crime writer's trade - hangman's noose, gun, handcuffs. Her expression is one of boyish good humour and, as she wore male clothing and wrote camp crime novels set in a girls' school called Radcliff Hall, that isn't really surprising.

McBean was imprisoned for homosexual offences early on in the Second World War so he did not, unlike contemporaries such as Cecil Beaton, serve as a war photographer. It would have been interesting to see how he would have applied his Surrealist sensitivity when tackling the fortunes and misfortunes of war. Perhaps he would have taken a different approach. Indeed, McBean hadn't always relied on Surrealism as a special-effects' tool. He could let the subject speak for itself. In 1940 he'd photographed artist's model and legendary naked civil servant Quentin Crisp and we see him here looking wistful although you feel that his lipsticked mouth is about to rasp out some slightly disturbing words of wisdom. Ten years later, Marlene Dietrich (1950) has a male-like firm sneer breaking out from her make-up covered face contorting under its fur hat.

As we can see from McBean's post-war pictures, his imprisonment for sexual offences did not spell professional death. He was able to pick-up his career where it left off, basing himself in Covent Garden's Endell Street. However, theatre work was drying-up, so he turned to the burgeoning new world of pop music. We see Shirley Bassey in 1959 looking upward with determination - but with a sad longing, too - at the hard career-path which lies ahead but which she's resolved to climb. Record sleeves also provided scope for his work and a source of income, and we see examples ranging from the one for Peter Sellers' record Songs for Swingin' Lovers (McBean's close friend David Ball provided the legs of the corpse we see dangling from a tree) to the sleeve for Vera Lynn's Sing with Vera. Here, the face of the wartime chanteuse peers at us over the back of the head of her pianist as she appears to prepare for a somewhat sedate East End sing-song.

By the late 1960s McBean had virtually retired, but he was coaxed into a fresh round of activity by a resurgence of interest in his work in the style-conscious early 1980s. We see queen of punk and new romanticism Vivienne Westwood in 1988, her head surmounted by a furry crown, her expression one of hostility that, from its bright eyes and upwardly-curving mouth, makes you think she's trying to smother a giggle. From the same year comes a photograph of hip-hoppers Run DMC, commissioned for American style magazine Details - for which McBean travelled to New York for the first time - with the bemused-looking trio perhaps wondering what made this gay old English guy tick. Two years after this assignment, McBean would be dead.

This exhibition is not simply a walk down memory lane, a journey back to an age of showbiz elegance that has passed. McBean showed how a startling art-form - Surrealism - could not only be harnessed in the service of beauty, but could also help to make its onlookers think. Modernist austerity and postmodernist chaotic eclecticism both need antidotes. McBean's work is as a good a place as any to start looking for them.

Till 22 October 2006.