John Deakin
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John Deakin (1912–1972) was an English portrait photographer, best known for his work centered around members of Francis Bacon's Soho inner circle.
[edit] Career
John Deakin was born in Bebington on the Wirral, and attended West Kirby Grammar School. He began his career in the 1940s as a freelance photographer for British Vogue, although his clinical realist style suggested he cared almost nothing for the glamour or vanity of his famous subjects, and he was later fired from this position.
During the 1950s and 1960s he took a series of portraits on commission for Francis Bacon, many of which the painter later used as source material for some of his most noted work, perhaps most notably the Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorn Standing in a Street in Soho, 1967 [1].
A chronic alcoholic, Deakin died in obscurity and poverty, though his reputation has latterly grown.
