Professional Life
Bown works primarily in black-and-white, using available light, and a forty year old film camera. She has photographed hundreds of subjects, including Orson Welles, Samuel Beckett, Sir John Betjeman, Woody Allen, Cilla Black, Quentin Crisp, P. J. Harvey, John Lennon, Truman Capote, John Peel, Richard Nixon, the gangster Charlie Richardson, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, Jarvis Cocker, Björk, Jayne Mansfield, Diana Dors, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Evelyn Waugh, Brassai and Margaret Thatcher. She took Queen Elizabeth II's eightieth birthday portrait.
Bown's extensive photojournalism output includes series on Hop Pickers, Greenham Common evictions, Butlin's holiday resort, the British Seaside, and in 2002, Glastonbury festival. Her social documentary and photo journalism was mostly unseen before the release of her book Unknown Bown 1947-1967 in 2007.
In 2007 her work on the Greenham Common evictions was selected by Val Williams and Susan Bright as part of 'How We Are: Photographing Britain', the first major survey of photography to be held at Tate Britain.
Read more about this topic: Jane Bown
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