What a pleasure to host the inaugural showing of work from the archives of French photographer Roger Kasparian, which is now up and running at the gallery. Roger’s story is the one you always hope for as a gallery owner: a previously undiscovered archive full of gems from arguably the most important decade in the history of contemporary pop culture.
I couldn’t put it better than the Financial Times’s esteemed art critic Jackie Wullschlager, who reviewed the show at the weekend, and called it “an irresistible evocation of time, place and the fleetingness of youth and fame.”
We have a fabulous cross section of important sixties artists on the gallery walls, including previously unreleased photographs of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Who, The Kinks, Marianne Faithfull, Serge Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy and many more. Unpublished Beatles and Stones pieces are always special, but stand-outs for me are the fabulous shots of The Who, the beautiful Marianne Faithfull close up, and the live portrait of The Beach Boys.
Edition sizes are very low, everything is handmade in the darkroom from Roger’s original negatives on heavyweight silver gelatin paper, and signed and numbered by Roger on the front under the image area.
