Norman Parkinson

Three Little Black Dresses

1961, printed later

Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) was the Twentieth Century’s most celebrated fashion photographer. He pioneered epic storytelling in his images, taking portrait and fashion photography beyond the stiff formality of his predecessors and injecting an easy and casual elegance into the art. His photographs created the age of the supermodel and made him the photographer of choice for celebrities, artists, Presidents and Prime Ministers. Parkinson worked for a wide range of publications, notably Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town Country and other international magazines, which brought him worldwide recognition. He reinvented himself and fashion photography throughout his career, from his ground-breaking, spontaneous images of the 1930s, through the war years and the Swinging Sixties to the exotic locations of the 1970s and 1980s. By the end of his life he had become a household name, the recipient of a CBE, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and the subject of a large scale retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Norman Parkinson died whist on location in Singapore shooting for Town Country in 1990.