Later this month, Proud Chelsea brings us its latest exhibition: Duffy: The Lost Portraits. The exhibition will showcase an exclusive collection of rare, signed prints from the sixties music and fashion photographer, Brian Duffy.
Duffy attempted to burn his negatives in 1979 and some of his most iconic portraits from his limited archive will be on show at the gallery on King's Road.
Speaking before his death in 2010, he said of that day: “I decided to knock it on the head, and that I would never take another picture. I decided to burn all my negatives in the garden. I felt everything I had to do and say in photography had been done. Later I wished I'd kept some negs.
"Looking back on odd things we've found, I'd love to have known the sequence of prints, only from an historical point of view. You make decisions in one period that you wouldn't necessarily make in another. But it's stimulating to try something new, it's interesting to be crazy.”
Duffy started his photographic career freelancing for Harpers Bazaar in the mid 1950s and in 1957 he was hired by Vogue, where he remained until 1963 shooting models like Jean Shrimpton.
Duffy: The Lost Portraits exhibits a range of this fashion photography alongside renowned portraits of John Lennon, Michael Cane and David Bowie (in particular the famous Aladdin Sane album cover, shot in 1973).
Duffy: The Lost Portraits, Proud Chelsea, 15 March – 6 May 2012, www.proud.co.uk
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