True Glamour/True Grit is a celebration of three decades of chic and sparkling fashion images shot by some of the most revered names in British photographic history – Terence Donovan, Brian Duffy, Terry O’Neill and John Swannell.
These photographers (apart from John Swannell who began his career assisting David Bailey for four years at Vogue studios) came prominently to everyone’s attention as part of the 60s London zeitgeist. Donovan after leaving the London School of Photo-Engraving at 15 went on to be mentored by John French, Duffy came from a fashion artist background and wound up assisting Adrian Flowers and O’Neill who was on the road to being a professional jazz drummer applied for a job as an air steward with BOAC, instead he was given a job in their technical photography department and the rest is history.
These men with their own visual language – a melding of influences with the revolutionary times they lived in, transformed the covers of magazines and newspapers and brought a new film-noir and almost irreverent edge to everything they did. Hardly surprising, with such creative minds that two of these photographers, Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy found themselves later firmly rooted in making award-winning advertisements and television commercials.
Together these photographers broke ground during probably our most creatively ‘out there’ decades and have provided us with images that never lose their appeal.