ANGUS MCBEAN PORTRAITS TERENCE PEPPER Book Number: 69547 Product format: Hardback Wondering at these gorgeous portraits now, we can understand why many of the greatest stars of stage, screen and the music scene eagerly grasped the privilege of being shot by one of the most revolutionary, avant-garde and influential portrait photographers of the 1930s to the 1950s. As they did for Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich, his images could make a star's career. He experimented with the settings for his subjects and developed a dramatic and surreal signature style. Sir Paul McCartney remembers that 'it was always a pleasure to do something a little different and a photo session with Angus was just that. He had a lively wit and an artistic bent, which was fun to be around'. He took the Beatles album cover 'Please Please Me'. Only Angus would think of photographing Vivien Leigh as Aurora, Goddess of Dawn by fastening tufts of wired cotton clouds directly to her dress! , or show Frances Day in a lobster pot washed up on a rock, juxtaposed with a disembodied hand holding up a mirror. His first portrait of René Ray had her evolving from plasticine as a 'film star in the making' and, for the picture used as a frontispiece of the present beautiful volume, he again used a mirror, with a putty surround, filled with a shallow layer of water to create the illusion of a lily pond and create a startling reflection. David Ball, who became McBean's partner and life-time
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