Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/05/02

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Great Photographers DB; portraitists; Jane Bown
From: Johnny Deadman <deadman@jukebox.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 16:14:37 +0100

on 2/5/00 2:18 PM, Jeff Moore at jbm@oven.com wrote:

> This mention of portrait folk reminds me: I'm in London for awhile and
> just saw a show of work by a woman named Jane Bown, who's a fantastic
> portraitist whose name I'd somehow never managed to hear in the US.
> Am I just particularly badly informed, or is she pretty much only
> known in the UK?  And if so, why?

I happen to know someone who was shot by Jane Bown (she pretty much only
works for UK newspapers I think). Person in question was Ian Hislop, who was
working with me as a presenter for a documentary I was making.  We had to do
publicity stills and Ian always complained about the time the photographers
took and how crap their pictures were, before saying how Jane Bown had come
in with one camera, looked around, stood him by the window, took one or two
shots, and left. The whole thing took 15 minutes and he says it's the best
picture ever taken of him (I've seen it and it is).

She uses an old Olympus OM something and generally only shoots one or two
exposures of the subject, almost always using natural/windowlight.

- --
Johnny Deadman

photos:      http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
music:       http://www.jukebox.demon.co.uk