User:Truthandfantasy/sandbox/Barbara Bellingham

New article name goes here new article content ... Barbara Bellingham Barbara Anne Bellingham was an English photographer known especially for her work in editorial photo-illustration and photomontage. She was born in Bristol on 18 February 1951 to Ruth (nee Harvey) and Donald Bellingham, a former RAF pilot who, on leaving the force, flew for BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation, later British Airways) and later took up farming in the village of Aston Abbotts in Buckinghamshire. Early life Barbara was the second of three sisters: Lynda, an actress, and Jean, a nurse and later antique dealer. Their childhood was spent at Longmoor Farm in Aston Abbotts. Her interest in photography came about by chance at school in the sixth form: "It was a whim really, just something I fancied doing, I had no experience at all. I just thought it was like magic". She was offered a place at the London College of Printing (later London College of Communication). Submitting work for a place on the photography course at the LCP required a portfolio of recent work. Barbara duly sent up a selection of black and white prints of images she had made in and around the farm but, in the rush to meet the entry deadline and without a proper portfolio had at her father's suggestion packed all the photographs into a plastic cement bag. She was amused that this seemed to impress the judging panel, perceived as a nonconformist and radical statement of intent rather than for the actual and more mundane reasons. She gained a Higher Diploma in Creative Photography) and in 1972, at the end of the three year course, started at Thames Television working in the darkroom as a photographic technician. It was here that she honed her black and white printing and developing skills. "The World At War" was an acclaimed and popular tv series, first airing on ITV in 1973 and documenting week by week the major events of the Second World War. Its impact relied exclusively on a wealth of grainy film footage and documentary photographs from museums, archives and other sources from around the world, all held together with an eloquent and ominous narration by Laurence Olivier. It was Barbara's job to enlarge and print up hundreds of bromide prints to the highest quality possible from often poor quality originals. The lack of creative input required was outweighed by a thorough and extensive grounding in analogue photography, film processing, contact sheets and test strips, bromide printing and enlarging, tinting, shading and spotting. It was fundamental to all her work thereafter, even when she made the move into digitally assembled imagery much later in her career. Work Barbara left Thames Television to concentrate on her own photography. Her sister Lynda introduced her to Joe Bangay, "photographer to the stars", who had a studio in Walton Street and was in constant demand by aspiring young actors and celebrities needing publicity photographs or spotted by Bangay himself as worth looking out for. Many of these appeared on the William Hickey page of the Daily Express in a page three slot which was in its way a more modest precursor to the later more explicit version that was to become a mainstay of the Sun. Bangay's black and white photos occasionally made use of the pavement bollard outside the small Chelsea studio, over which a leggy young actress would be vaulting playfully, smiling winningly for the camera. Some years later he would capture a young Madonna in her first UK photo-shoot. Barbara had an arrangement with Joe which was mutually beneficial: in return for arranging appointments and the day-to-day running of the studio, she was given free use of both it and the darkroom for her own work whenever it was free. Sometimes she used it for portraits of actors wanting an advert in Spotlight magazine, the directory for workers in the performing arts. She found work working two days a week as a lecturer at London's Central School of Art (now Central Saint Martins). Jurgen Schadeburg, a German émigré and successful reportage photographer, was one of her colleagues and the two became close friends. Schadeburg was in the long tradition of documentary social realism in black and white photography that Barbara admired. She began to get commissions from magazines to document lifestyles and street fashion and showed a remarkable ability in engaging with total strangers, encouraging and allowing them to blossom in front of her 35mm Pentax while all the while sharing an unforced enthusiasm and appreciation of their personality and appearance. Rarely if ever did anyone say no. "She held very strict opinions on the prying eye of the camera and respected people's privacy and dignity" Karel Falk, a friend since childhood. She bought a studio in Neckinger Mills, a former leather tannery in Abbey Street, Bermondsey, and one of the first warehouse conversions in London, sharing the space with the illustrator Chloe Cheese. Sarah Charles, a stylist, and David DeSilva, who was her partner and a graphic designer and illustrator, were an integral part of her creative team at this stage in her career and together they worked on commissions for the Sunday Times, The Observer, The Guardian, Harpers and Queen, Elle, Time Out and others. In 1986 Debut Art, an agency representing photographers and illustrators, was founded by Andrew Coningsby. Barbara was one of the first to be taken on to their books and continued to work for clients in the UK and abroad. By this time she was developing a photomontage style of illustration and, at a time when digitally produced work was coming to the fore, was still creating each element of the illustration manually and using her own photographic prints. Integrated with handmade elements, props and airbrush techniques, these illustrations were often wrongly assumed to have been produced entirely digitally. She came much later to Photoshop. Images were created using hand-cut bromide prints, car spray paints and what was to hand, with Photoshop used as an editing tool to manipulate material already created in the studio, darkroom and workshop. She always shunned and was anxious to avoid the sleekness of entirely digitally produced work. In 1989 Barbara moved back to Aston Abbotts with David and following the birth of their son Louis. Their daughter Bonita was born there shortly after. She continued to work for clients all over the world. She took a part-time position as a lecturer in photography at Aylesbury College in 2006 but in February of the following year was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died at home with her family on 31 October 2007.