Just watched this excellent film-documentary. I’d known of Beaton, obviously, and would have guessed that I was looking at one of his images if it came from Vogue, but I really hadn’t appreciated the breadth and significance of his work. The documentary was quite inspiring. In particular, I’d been aware of some striking War photography from 1939-1945, but hadn’t realised that these were also Beaton’s work.
“Less well known is the fact that Beaton was one of Britain’s hardest working war photographers during the Second World War. As an official photographer for the British Ministry of Information, Beaton travelled far and wide to document the impact of war on people and places in his own unique style. In later life, Beaton came to regard his war photographs as his single most important body of photographic work. He took some 7,000 photographs for the Ministry of Information covering all aspects of the Second World War.”
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/cecil-beaton-war-photographer
I’ve ordered the book of an exhibition from 1974, at the IWM. As documentary images, they’ve inspired me to look a bit outside the box when I would normally take routine or mundane pictures. (7th)