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Brigitte Bardot (the orange background session) by Sam Levin, 1967 |
A very private affair, lived large in public
Gerald Isaaman meets with the curator of an exhibition that documents the rise of paparazzi and the origins of Brigitte Bardot’s stardom
I’d love her to come to the show”, says James Hyman with a sigh. But we won’t know officially until tomorrow (Friday) whether Brigitte Bardot, the famed sex kitten of the French cinema, will be at Hyman’s West End art gallery.
The occasion is a special one – an exhibition to celebrate Bardot’s 75th birthday with some 75 vintage photographs taken of her by the paparazzi who levelled their cameras whenever Bardot appeared in the 1950s and 1960s.
“I’m working very hard to persuade her to come to London from St Tropez,” adds 41-year-old James. “There is tremendous interest in the exhibition from around the world. And it would be marvellous for her to be here.”
The exhibition at James’s gallery in Savile Row, off Regent Street, is very much a culmination in his own interest in photography as an art form and the build up of a collection of rare pictures at his home in Hampstead.
The exhibition is equally a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of the celebrity photographers – named after the Vespa-driving character Paparazzo in Fellini’s seminal film, La Dolce Vita – who developed a whole new genre of photography, certainly one more intimate and explicit sexually than ever seen before.
And it also coincides appropriately with London Fashion Week being staged from September 18 to 22.
Frequent trips to Paris have helped James add to his photographic collection, which includes pictures bought from the estates of some paparazzi and others from America.
“I also met by chance a man who knows Bardot and so some of the pictures in the show have come directly from her,” he adds.
“They are all black and white apart from seven or eight in colour and most of them are simple 10x8 photographs.
“The important point is that they are vintage original pictures you can no longer obtain – and therefore unique.
“I want the exhibition to show the creation of an aesthetic and also its decay. At first, Bardot colluded to some extent with the paparazzi. She knew how important they were for the creation of her image.”
And one photographer in particular, Sam Levin, reinforced that with studio pictures of Bardot stretching her legs from a folding canvas chair – and standing naked wrapped in brown paper.
These are priced at £1,400 each while other Bardot gems can be bought for £500 and the highest priced ones for £2,500.
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