Jane Bown exhibition launches with 50 unseen portraits

An exhibition featuring renowned Observer photographer Jane Bown launched today at the Guardian News & Media Kings Place headquarters.

John Lennon, Bjork, Woody Allen, Margaret Thatcher, Mick Jagger [pictured] and Sinead O'Connor are among the 100 portraits featured in Bown's new exhibition, taken during the course of her 60 year career.

Fifty of the portraits have never been seen before and are featured in a new book, a release from GNM said.

Bown's collection is entirely owned by the Scott Trust, GNM's owner. The Observer yesterday launched an online interactive featuring all her work: 'The complete Jane Bown: a lifetime in photographs'.

Last Sunday, Observer colleague, Robin McKie, interviewed the photographer for the newspaper's magazine: most of Bown's photographs were taken in sessions lasting no more than quarter of an hour, he reported.

"She had no props and turned up carrying only a shopping bag with her camera in it. Annie Leibovitz she wasn't. Even exposure meters were shunned. 'I just looked at the light on the back of my hand and judged it that way.' Thus Bown perfected minimalist photography: the same camera, the same lens, the same setting, but no flash or exposure meter. In this way she was left free to concentrate on those eyes," McKie commented.

Curator Luke Dodd has spent the past few years arranging Bown's archive, 'negative strip after negative strip, all annotated in her own hand with the name of the subject and the date of when the shot was taken,' he said, in the release.

"This collection of largely unseen portraits represents a reassessment of Jane's very considerable achievement. These portraits have not been chosen because of whom they portray, necessarily, but because of the very particular way in which Jane has managed to portray them."

The exhibition runs in the foyer of Guardian News and Media from Friday October 23 2009 until Sunday December 6 2009; and in the exhibition level in Kings Place from Friday October 23 to Sunday November 21: York Way, Kings Cross, London. For more information visit: www.guardian.co.uk/gnmexhibitions.

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