Jane Bown

Jane Hope Bown CBE (13 March 1925 – 21 December 2014) was an English photographer who worked for The Observer newspaper from 1949.

Her portraits received widespread critical acclaim.

Early life

Bown was born in Eastnor, Herefordshire on 13 March 1925 and brought up in Dorsetby women who she regarded as her aunts, although she later discovered that she was the illegitimate daughter of one of them. She 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.

Career

She started out as a child portrait photographer, but had a break in 1949 when she met Mechthild Nawiasky, an Observerpicture editor, who asked her to photograph the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Bown worked primarily in black-and-white, using available light, and a forty-year-old film camera. She photographed hundreds of subjects, including Orson Welles, Samuel Beckett, Sir John Betjeman, Woody Allen, Cilla Black, Quentin Crisp, P. J. Harvey, John Lennon, Truman Capote, John Peel, the gangster Charlie Richardson, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, Jarvis Cocker, Björk, Jayne Mansfield, Diana Dors, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Evelyn Waugh, Brassaiand Margaret Thatcher. She took Queen Elizabeth II's eightieth birthday portrait.

Bown's extensive photojournalism output includes series on Hop Pickers, Greenham Common evictions, Butlin's holiday resort, the British Seaside, and in 2002, Glastonbury festival. Her social documentary and photo journalism was mostly unseen before the release of her book Unknown Bown 1947-1967 in 2007.

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.

In 2014, directors Luke Dodd and Michael Whyte released a documentary about Bown, Looking For Light, featuring conversations with Bown about her life and interviews with those she photographed and worked with, including Edna O'Brien, Lynn Barber and Richard Ashcroft.

Honours and awards

In 1985, she was awarded an MBE and in 1995, a CBE. She was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society in 2000. These are awarded to 'distinguished persons having, from their position or attainments, an intimate connection with the science or fine art of photography or the application thereof'.

Personal life

Bown married the fashion retail executive Martin Moss, who died in 2007, and they had three children, Matthew, Louisa, and Hugo. On 21 December 2014, Bown died at the age of 89.

Exhibitions

• The Gentle Eye, National Portrait Gallery, London (1980-1)
• Rock 1963-2003
• Unknown Bown 1947-1967, Guardian Newsroom, London (2007-8)
• How We Are: Photographing Britain (with others). Includes work from the Greenham Common evictions. Tate Britain, 2007.
• National Portrait Gallery, London (2011)

Books

• The Gentle Eye (1980)
• Women of Consequence (1986)
• Men of Consequence (1987)
• The Singular Cat (1988)
• Pillars of the Church (1991)
• Observer (1996)
• Faces: The Creative Process Behind Great Portraits (2000)
• Rock 1963-2003 (2003)
• Unknown Bown 1947-1967 (2007)
• Exposures (2009)

Collections

• Palace of Westminster, London
• National Portrait Gallery, London