Thoroughly Modern: The pioneering life of Barbara Ker-Seymer, photographer, and her brilliant Bohemian...

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Sarah Knights

Thoroughly Modern

The pioneering life of Barbara Ker-Seymer, photographer, and her brilliant Bohemian friends...

Sarah Knights

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English

Virago Press Ltd
29 August 2023

Photography & photographs; Biography; Biography: historical, political & military; Biography: literary; Social & cultural history

The life of pioneering photographer Barbara Ker-Seymer

'Thoroughly entertaining... Knights expertly evokes this hedonistic period' The Times

'A picturesque portrayal of a world that sounds as thoroughly maniacal as it was modern' Daily Telegraph

'I just called myself Ker-Seymer Photographs,' Barbara said. 'I didn't think it was necessary to have your sex displayed on the photographs.'

Vivacious, sassy, out to have fun, Ker-Seymer was committed to independence.

One of a handful of outstanding British photographers of her generation, Ker-Seymer's work defined a talented, forward-looking network of artists, dancers, writers, actors and musicians, all of whom flocked to her Bond Street studio. Among her sitters were Evelyn Waugh, Margot Fonteyn, Cyril Connolly, Jean Cocteau and Vita Sackville-West. Barbara Ker-Seymer (1905-1993) disdained lucrative 'society' portraits in favour of unfussy 'modern' images. Her work was widely admired by her peers, among them, Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. Her images as a gossip-column photojournalist for Harper's Bazaar were the go-to representations of the aristocracy and Bright Young Things at play. Yet as both a studio portraitist and a photojournalist, she broke with convention.

Equally unconventional in her personal life, Ker-Seymer was prefigurative in the way she lived her life as a bisexual woman and in her contempt for racism, misogyny and homophobia. Fiercely independent, for much of her life she rejected the idea of family, preferring her wide set of creative friends, with the artist Edward Burra, ballet dancer William 'Billy' Chappell and choreographer Frederick Ashton at its core.

Today, Ker-Seymer's photographs are known for whom they represent, rather than the face behind the camera, an irony underpinned by the misattribution of some of her most daring images to Cecil Beaton. Yet her intelligence, sparkle, wit and genius enabled her to link arms with the surrealists, the Bloomsbury Group, the Bright Young Things and, most gloriously, the worlds of theatre, cabaret and jazz.

With unprecedented access to private archives and hitherto unseen material, Sarah Knights brings Barbara Ker-Seymer and her brilliant bohemian friends vividly to life.

By: Sarah Knights
Imprint: Virago Press Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 36mm
Weight: 580g
ISBN: 9780349011516
ISBN 10: 0349011516
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 29 August 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Sarah Knights' first book, a biography of the novelist David Garnett, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize. She lives in North Norfolk.

Reviews for Thoroughly Modern: The pioneering life of Barbara Ker-Seymer, photographer, and her brilliant Bohemian friends

A picturesque portrayal of a world that sounds as thoroughly maniacal as it was modern... entertaining reading... full of colourful detail -- Catherine Ostler * Daily Telegraph * Thoroughly entertaining... Knights expertly evokes this hedonistic period -- Roger Lewis * The Times * Knights's book is so entertaining, skipping through affairs, snobbery and wild parties * Daily Telegraph *