Helen Muspratt Photographer

A triple photographic portrait by Helen Muspratt

EXHIBITION

Helen Muspratt Photographer

17 May – 27 June 2021

Blackwell Hall, Weston Library

This exhibition has now closed

About the exhibition

The pioneering photographer, Helen Muspratt (1907–2001) produced some of the most astonishing images of the twentieth century.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Rn4ThQy6De0?rel=0

This exhibition explored an extraordinary body of work in many different styles and genres from experimental photography using techniques such as solarisation, to social documentary and studio portraiture.

In the late 1930s Muspratt opened a studio in Oxford where she became established as a remarkable portrait photographer. Critical to all her work was her preoccupation with the face – its ‘shape and angle’ – and she became an eminent portrait photographer
recording some of the leading figures of the twentieth century.

A photograph of a young woman looking directly at the camera

Eileen Agar, surrealist painter, solarised portrait 1935. This is one of Helen Muspratt's most famous images.

Photograph of a woman looking over her right shoulder

Tess Mayor, later Lady Rothschild, solarised portrait 1933 Ramsey & Muspratt

Eleanor Singer, solarised portrait 1933 Ramsey & Muspratt

Oliver Zangwill, neuropsychologist, solarised portrait 1934

A photograph of a young man with head tilted to the right

’Young Man’: A. E. D. Stevens, solarised portrait 1936

Two women standing next to each other dressed in costume

Hilda & Mary Spencer Watson dancing as Jacob & Esau 1935

David Brynley, singer, solarised portrait c.1933

This exhibition marks the recent and important gift of the Helen Muspratt photographic archive to the Bodleian Libraries, including over 2,000 original prints and numerous surviving negatives. This retrospective forms part of Photo Oxford Festival 2020, the theme for which is Women and Photography and coincides with the centenary of the first woman matriculating and graduating from the University of Oxford.

The curator

Jessica Sutcliffe

The Bodleian Libraries are grateful to Ellen Miller for her support of the exhibition and the Ampersand Foundation for its support of the photographic archives.