The lost world of Lowry
50-YEAR-OLD SNAPS OF GREAT ARTIST TURN UP IN PHOTOGRAPHER’S ATTIC
FIFTY years ago a teenager was commissioned to take photographs of a great artist.
The images of LS Lowry were for a pioneering new taboo-breaking and radical fashion magazine, Nova.
Just a few of the shots 18-year-old Clive Arrowsmith took were used.
But now more than 40 ‘lost’ intimate photographs taken during the shoot have been recovered from his archive in an attic by Clive’s daughter. The black-and-white pictures will now go on show at The Lowry Arts Centre in Salford this summer.
They were taken in 1966 at Lowry’s home in Mottram-in-Longdendale and in Salford.
They include a beautiful shot of the artist with an unknown young girl with a bag of chips in the street, and Lowry standing on a doorstep.
Clive, 68, said: “The Lowry shoot was such a graphic insight into Lowry’s hidden life. Having been a painter up until this time, it was the project that changed my mind to photography.”
Forty-two of the images will be reproduced for the exhibition, some being blown up to 2.5 metres wide.
Nova was published from 1965 to 1975 and featured experimental ‘impressionistic’ photographs by Helmut Newton, Don McCullin, Hans Feurer and Terence Donovan.
The ‘lost’ Lowry images were uncovered by Clive’s daughter, Eugenie, who was cataloguing her father’s work.
They will now form part of a major exhibition, Lowry at Home: Salford 1966 – Unseen Photographs by Clive Arrowsmith, which will run from June 10 to September 24.
The photographs also show Lowry on the streets of Salford – the setting for many of his iconic industrial scenes.
Claire Stewart, curator of the LS Lowry collection at The Lowry, said: “Lowry was an incredibly private man, which make Clive’s images all the more special. They show the very sparse nature of his home life, from where he painted some of his most famous work. Needless to say, we were very excited to receive Eugenie’s call and are delighted to be sharing them with the world for the very first time.” Clive’s photographs have been accepted into the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, as is his book, Arrowsmith: Fashion, Beauty and Portraits, that has also recently been added to the collection of art books at the Victoria and Albert London.
He is a Fellow of The Royal Photographic Society and his second book accompanies the exhibition at The Lowry and will be available on general sale.
Clive said: “I was sent up north by Nova editor Dennis Hackett who was from Manchester to get pictures of Lowry at his house. I photographed the entire thing – the buckets of coal, his two-barred electric fire, and the milk bottle next to the sink. It was like going back in time. It was a mess, with paintings and drawings everywhere. It was really rough and ready.
“I spent two days with him. We walked the streets of Salford as well. Kids were rushing up to us. In 1966 with immigration there were Pakistani, Indian, black kids, they wanted to be pictured with him. They were having a great time.
“I went to his door and as soon as he drew back the curtain I took a picture of him. I told him I was an artist, and interested in his paintings and that broke the ice.”
Now a celebrated international photographer, Clive attended Kingston College of Art in London and on graduation painted for two years. He then began taking photographs while working as a graphic designer for Rediffusion TV, the makers of the pop programme Ready Steady Go.
It was like going back in time. It was a mess, with paintings and drawings everywhere Clive Arrowsmith