John Deakin - Critical Opinion and Legacy

Critical Opinion and Legacy

In 1979, the art critic John Russell wrote that, with Deakin's passing, "there was lost a photographer who often rivalled Bacon in his ability to make a likeness in which truth came wrapped and unpackaged. His portraits...had a dead-centred, unrhetorical quality. A complete human being was set before us, without additives." A series of exhibitions revived Deakin's reputation after the obscurity of his final years. In 1984, the Victoria & Albert Museum mounted the exhibition John Deakin: The Salvage of a Photographer. In 1996, the National Portrait Gallery, London, presented John Deakin Photographs. An exhibition, John Deakin: Tattoo Portraits was staged in Liverpool in 1999.

Daniel Farson wrote of his portraits: "I am sure he will be seen as one of the most disturbing photographers of the century. The expressions of his victims look suitably appalled for Deakin had no time for such niceties as "cheese" and the effect was magnfied by huge contrasty blow-ups with every pore, blemish, and blood-shot eyeball exposed. In this way, he combined the instant horror of a passport photo with a shock value all his own." Robin Muir summed up his legacy: "His portraits still look starkly modern half a century on. His street photographs are haunting documents of three major cities. After two major retrospectives in London institutions, his place in the pantheon of twentieth century British photographers might be secure."

Deakin was the basis for the photographer Carl Castering in Colin Wilson's novel Ritual In The Dark. Deakin was played by actor Karl Johnson in John Maybury's biographical film about Francis Bacon, Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon.