‘Jane Bown: Play Shadow’

Posted by Barbara on November 24, 2025 in Art, Blog, Dame designate, Exhibition | 2 comments

‘Some people take pictures, I find them’.  Walking through Newlands House Gallery in Petworth, their current exhibition ‘Jane Bown: Play Shadow’ gives you the understanding of how this extraordinary woman achieved so much.  Her instrument was an Olympus OM-1 carried in a shopping basket, which is also on display.

Jane Bown (1925-2014) worked for The Observer over six decades. The black and white photographs she produced somehow captured the very essence of her sitters.  Her photos are like a Who’s Who of remarkable people from the arts, politics and culture, from Bjork to David Bailey, Bertrand Russell to Brassai. Bown once said ‘The last time I changed my camera was fifty years ago. All I need is a good face and the right light’.  Indeed, she only brought lights when photographing in mid-winter.

The exhibition includes a film lasting just under an hour with interviews with Bown herself, her son and people who worked with her or just knew her well.  It is these interviews that bring the person to life.  Bown was not drawn to her subjects’ fame; she often did not even bother to ask their name, rather wanting to know what they did. Apparently when she went to photograph P J Harvey she had no idea who she was but liked her so much asked if she could accompany her on tour. She was known for making the people she photographed feel relaxed, capturing natural expressions and momentary gestures that others might overlook.  The impression is one of spontaneity, and indeed some of the photographs were taken extremely quickly.  She explains how she achieved the remarkable photo of Samuel Beckett; she headed for the stage door and photographed him there. The rest is history.

She studied photography at Guildford School of Art after the Second World War, freely admitting that she was a poor student, who spent quite a lot of the time in her classes gazing out the window.  We learn from the film that she was not interested in photographic theory or styles; rather, she loved shape, texture and form, and how the person fits into the landscape.

Her career and achievements were remarkable in the context of the times. She worked in a largely male dominated industry when photojournalism and newspapers were overwhelmingly masculine professions. Yet she carved out her own space through modesty, precision and determination. Her quiet presence granted her access to moments others might have missed and her insistence on simplicity allowed her to concentrate entirely on her sitters.

In the film there is an interview with Lynn Barber, the reputed Observer journalist; she notes that when Bown and she went to conduct interviews and do photographic shoots, the sitters invariably were nicer to Bown than to her, as Barber would be asking the difficult questions, while Bown was able to get on with the photography. 

Another aspect that comes out during the interviews is her adaptability. Her childhood was severely disrupted and she was brought up by a succession of aunts; in her words ‘I was a bit like pass the parcel’.  Perhaps this helps to explain how she was able to engage so fully with her sitters that they dropped the mask and let her see behind the eyes. One of her colleagues sums it up: she was about the eyes, the spirit and the sadness of people, gentle but not sentimental, humane. And the last words go to Bown: ‘The best pictures are uninvited; they’re suddenly there in front of you….easy to see but difficult to catch.’