Remembering Doris Lessing on her birthday π
π· Roger Mayne, 1959 @NPGLondon
"Doris Lessing is the ideal winner of the Nobel Prize. After all, the prize is about idealism, & was founded in the belief that writers can make the world a better place."
- Tom Payne
Doris Lessing by Marianne Majerus, 1984 @NPGLondon
"What luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking & startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, ... the grace & charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss."
What a lovely portrait of Doris Lessing, by Toby Melville.
"She was adept at tracing sly signs of continuity where that particular path through the narrative woods had been overgrown and bypassed time out of mind β not least by Lessing."
- Lorna Sage
Doris Lessing wins the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, & this is what she finds on her doorstep.
π· Shaun Curry
Doris Lessing by Ida Kar
2 1/4 inch square film negative, late 1950s @NPGLondon
Roots & flowers...
Doris Lessing by Sophie Bassouls
Paris, 1995
"I keep on writing. I consider that professionalism. But I don't see the use of it sometimes."
β’ β’ β’
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Remembering Sarah Bernhardt on her birthday π
π· Nadar, c.1865
"Her performances were legendary and her affairs lurid, matched only by a prodigious ability to convert both into hard cash."
- Olivia Laing
Manuel Orazi
Coffee with Sarah Bernhardt, c.1895 βοΈ
Remembering Robert Capa on his birthday π
π· Alfred Eisenstaedt, New York, 1942
"If your pictures arenβt good enough, youβre not close enough."
One of the greatest of movie set photographs, by Robert Capa: Ingrid Bergman & Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Notorious, 1946. It's been suggested that Capa's love affair with Bergman was the genesis of a Hitchcock film made 8 years later: Rear Window.
Ingrid Bergman was in the middle of a torrid love affair with the great photographer Robert Capa when he took these photographs on the Notorious set, 1946. What a look she gives him!
Celebrate the Malcolm Arnold Centennial! ππ―
π· Erich Auerbach, 1968
"Against the background of the postwar trend towards the ascetic, the cerebral & the experimental, his music gave immediate & unconditional enjoyment to performers & listeners alike."
- Christopher Mowat
Malcolm Henry Arnold by Neil Drabble, 1991 @NPGLondon#MalcolmArnold100
He won an #Oscar for his score to The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957
Malcolm Arnold was an accomplished conductor, of his own & others' scores. Here's a great process shot: recording the score for The Battle of Britain, with composer William Walton & director Guy Hamilton
π· Jim Gray, Denham Studios, 1969
Remembering Georg Solti on his birthday π
π· Patrick Lichfield, 1982 @NPGLondon
"The central feature of the Solti-Chicago success was the sheer stunning quality of the playing, which few other groups could rival."
- James R. Oestreich
Georg Solti by Erich Auerbach, 1963
"Often he is greeted with more bravos for showing his face than some of his colleagues receive for showing their stuff."
- Stephen E. Rubin
Georg Solti by Erich Lessing, Palais Garnier, Paris, 1973
"When I learn a piece, I know how it *should* sound. How much I get out of that *should* is a question of talent, experience, & perseverance - just never giving up."
Remembering Dizzy Gillespie on his birthday π
π· Ted Williams, 1960
"His improvising was eruptive; suddenly, a line would bolt into the high register, only to come tumbling down."
- Peter Watrous
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie are Horn Players
1982
Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie, in one of the great jazz photographs, by Herman Leonard, New York, 1949
All the Things You Are, from 1945: