His portraits included images of the likes of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Eduardo Paolozzi.
Indeed, some of Bacon’s major artworks were based on photographs he commissioned from Deakin, such as Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, Henrietta Moraes on a Bed and Three Studies of Lucian Freud.
Deakin originally wished to be a painter, but he went on to earn a living as a staff photographer on the British edition of Vogue during the 1940s-50s. He enjoyed the support of Vogue editor Audrey Withers, who championed him despite his dislike of fashion photography.
However, Deakin excelled at portraits and his subjects were the writers, artists, poets, actors and popular entertainers of the early post war years: among them, Eugene Ionesco, John Huston, WH Auden and Yves Montand, Picasso, and Dylan Thomas. Deakin recognised this work was his true vocation when he wrote: “Being fatally drawn to the human race, what I want to do when I take a photograph is make a revelation about it. So my sitters turn into my victims …”
Notorious for “his blistering personality, bad behaviour and total disregard for others”, Deakin was fired from Vogue in 1954, on account of his drinking and “an accumulation of minor incidents involving lateness, a series of crashing tripods, and inevitable arguments with fashion editors”.
Archive emerges
Appearing at Chiswick Auctions’ (25% buyer’s premium) 19th & 20th Century Photographs sale on June 6 was a box containing Deakin’s photographic work prints from the 1950s-60s. It had been compiled by BL Kearley, an agency that worked with him.
Comprising 30 silver gelatin prints of varying sizes, it included portraits of four well-known personalities: Kenneth Tynan (1952), Siobhán McKenna (1952), Orson Welles (1951) and Picasso, plus other subject matter, which included a scene in the French House, Soho, showing proprietor Gaston Berlemont behind the bar, and contact sheets featuring dance hall and street scenes in Paris, nuns in Rome and unidentified portraits, many of which had Deakin’s annotations in pencil verso.
A chronic alcoholic, Deakin died in obscurity and poverty but posthumously his reputation has grown immensely.
Exhibitions to date include the Victoria and Albert Museum’s John Deakin: The Salvage of a Photographer (1984-85), the National Portrait Gallery’s John Deakin Photographs (1996) and Under the Influence: John Deakin and the Lure of Soho (2014) at The Photographers Gallery, London.
The lot had a modest estimate of £500-700, but sold to an online bidder for £11,000, illustrating the allure of Deakin as a photographer and his reputational rise.
An older London
Oxford Arms view from a group of 14 images were from the influential series published by The Society for Photographing Relics of Old London from 1867-78, £1400 at Chiswick Auctions.
Victorian photographs that helped to preserve some of London’s most historic buildings hammered for £1400 at Chiswick Auctions.
The group of 14 images were from the influential series published by The Society for Photographing Relics of Old London from 1867-78.
The society was initially formed to record and preserve the Oxford Arms, a 17th century galleried coaching inn on Warwick Lane near St Paul’s Cathedral which had been earmarked for demolition the following year.
The group commissioned the photographers Alfred and John Bool to document the building, with the prints proving so popular that the Society went on to commission 120 more photographs from A&J Bool and Henry Dixon over 12 years.
While the outcry the photographs created was not enough to save the Oxford Arms (The George in Borough is London’s only surviving 17th century coaching inn), it helped change public opinion and led directly to the foundation of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877 that continues today.
This lot of 14 carbon prints contained two views of the Oxford Arms plus images of other London ‘relics’ threatened at the time with demolition including the Sir Paul Pindar House, Bishopsgate (1878), and the church of St Bartholomew the Great (1877) that still stand today.
