Jane Bown
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Jane Bown (born 1925) is a British photographer who has worked for The Observer newspaper in the United Kingdom since 1949. Her portraits of the famous of the 20th and 21st centuries have received critical acclaim, earning her an exhibition of her work in the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1980.
She works primarily in black-and-white, using available light, with a forty year old camera. She has photographed hundreds of subjects, including Queen Elizabeth II for her eightieth birthday, Orson Welles, Samuel Beckett, Sir John Betjeman, Woody Allen, Cilla Black, Quentin Crisp, P. J. Harvey, John Lennon, Truman Capote, John Peel, Richard Nixon, the gangster Charlie Richardson, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, Jarvis Cocker, Jayne Mansfield, Diana Dors, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Evelyn Waugh, Jean Cocteau, Brassai and Margaret Thatcher. Her extensive photojournalism output includes series on Hop Pickers, Greenham Common evictions, Butlin's holiday resort, the British Seaside, and in 2002, Glastonbury festival.
She was born in Dorset, and first worked as a chart corrector, which included a role in plotting the D-Day invasion. She studied photography at Guildford College under Ifor Thomas. She started out as a child portrait photographer, but got her big break when she received a telegram in 1949 from Mechthild Nawiasky an Observer picture editor, asking her to photograph the philosopher Bertrand Russell.
Exhibitions include 'The Gentle Eye', National Portrait Gallery, London (1980-1), 'Rock 1963-2003' and 'Unknown Bown 1947-1967' Guardian Newsroom, London (2007-8). A survey of Bown's mostly unseen, social documentary and photo journalism output which has been collected in a book of the same name.
In 2007 her work on the Greenham Common evictions was selected by Val Williams and Susan Bright as part of 'How We Are: Photographing Britain', the first major survey of photography to be held at Tate Britain. Other photographers in the show included; Madame Yevonde, Robert Smithies (previously a member of staff at the Manchester Guardian), Martin Parr, Jem Southam, Percy Hennell, Eric Hosking, Anna Fox, Daniel Meadows, Angus McBean, Paul Graham and Dorothy Bohm.
Publications include The Gentle Eye (1980), Women of Consequence (1986), Men of Consequence (1987), The Singular Cat (1988), Pillars of the Church (1991), Faces: The Creative Process Behind Great Portraits (2000), Rock 1963-2003 (2003) and Unknown Bown 1947-1967 (2007).
In 1985, she was awarded an MBE and in 1995, she was "upgraded" to the CBE.
Collections include Palace of Westminster, London and National Portrait Gallery, London.
