Photography Collection

From the beginning, British, Irish and American authors were frequently profiled and their writings published in Vanity Fair, and among the vintage portraits shown in the exhibition are iconic images of H.G. Wells, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Rebecca West, Ernest Hemingway and George Bernard Shaw. The magazine's mix of artistic seriousness and popular celebrity meant that commissioned portraits of these authors and artists such as Claude Monet, Augustus John and the leaders of the avant-garde (photographed by Man Ray), were displayed alongside profiles of actors, musicians and athletes. In addition to showing the works of acknowledged leaders in early portrait photography, Vanity Fair Portraits features the works of now lesser-known practitioners, among them the great British-born theatre photographer, Florence Vandamm. Her portrait of American actress Alice White and her group portrait of the Albertina Rasch Dancers, both taken in the late 1920s, remind us of her singular talent and re-establish her in the canon of great portrait photographers of the early twentieth century.

Vanity Fair Portraits presents an opportunity to see some of the definitive portraits of the 'Jazz Age', including now classic studies of Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker and Noël Coward. The selection of portraits also includes some previously unpublished and unseen images, including two portraits of author Virginia Woolf from a sitting with photographers Maurice Beck and Helen MacGregor in 1924. Although Vanity Fair suspended publication in 1936, it would be resurrected in another period of decadence and excess, the 1980s. Once again, its purpose was to record modern men and women of culture, stature and talent and, as in the early period, portrait photography was the graphic bedrock of the magazine. In the tradition of editor Frank Crowninshield (1914-36), the revived monthly commissioned the world's leading portrait photographers, among them Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin, Herb Ritts, Harry Benson, Mario Testino, Jonathan Becker and Bruce Weber.

Vanity Fair's iconic photographs continue to make news. Since the magazine's re-launch in 1983, cover images including the Reagans dancing (1985), a very pregnant Demi Moore (1991), a formal portrait of President Bush's Afghan War Cabinet (2002) and most recently actresses Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley photographed naked (2006) have been embedded in the collective cultural consciousness. The name of one photographer has become synonymous with modern portraiture - Annie Leibovitz. In advance of the National Portrait Gallery hosting an exhibition devoted entirely to her work (Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life 1990­2005, 16 October 2008­25 January 2009), Vanity Fair Portraits presents some of her most enduring images in the context of the magazine's photographic history.

Leibovitz has become the dominant image-maker of Vanity Fair, just as Edward Steichen dominated Vanity Fair's first period. Steichen (1879-1973), who created an unrivalled gallery of portraits of the dominant personalities of the 1920s and 1930s, has a worthy successor in Leibovitz and Vanity Fair Portraits is the first major exhibition to display their works together. Photographs by Steichen in the exhibition include portraits of Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Anna May Wong and Paul Robeson. Photographs by Leibovitz, from the several hundred shoots she has done for the magazine, include portraits of Miles Davis, Kate Winslet, Lance Armstrong and some of the best examples of the group portraits that have become so closely associated with the magazine.