John Havinden
© John Havinden/ National Portrait Gallery, London
John Havinden
by John Havinden
bromide print, 1930
10 in. x 8 in. (254 mm x 203 mm)
Purchased, 1987
Primary Collection
NPG P350
On display in Room 25 on Floor 2 at the National Portrait Gallery
Sitterback to top
- John Havinden (1908-1987), Photographer. Sitter in 1 portrait, Artist or producer of 1 portrait.
Artistback to top
- John Havinden (1908-1987), Photographer. Artist or producer of 1 portrait, Sitter in 1 portrait.
This portraitback to top
The fusion of sans-serif type (spelling FOTO) with the shape of his glasses alludes to Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye), a book published in 1929 to mark the Stuttgart 'Film und Foto' exhibition.
Linked publicationsback to top
- Rideal, Liz, Insights: Self-portraits, 2005, p. 63 Read entry
Havinden’s work as a photographer was modernist: stark, abstract and uncompromising. Time working at his brother’s design company perhaps inspired the clever fusion of sans-serif type with the shape of his glasses. Havinden’s self-portrait alludes to Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye), a book published in Germany in 1929 to mark the Stuttgart ‘Film und Foto’ exhibition.
- Rogers, Malcolm, Camera Portraits, 1989 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 20 October 1989 - 21 January 1990), p. 207 Read entry
Brother of the designer Ashley Havinden, John Havinden began his photographic career in Australia, before returning to London in 1929, where, with the backing of Madame Yevonde, he set up Gretton Photographs (1930), a studio for commercial and colour photography. Until he abandoned photography in 1938, Havinden produced a considerable volume of advertising work, much of it for Crawford's Agency (of which his brother was a director), for clients such as HMV and Standard Cars. Precise, stark, with a strong feeling for underlying abstract forms, his work parallels in photography the modernist tendency in British art of the period.
This self-portrait is a characteristic blend of the figurative and abstract, in which the German word 'FOTO', is spelled out across Havinden's features, part in modernist sanserif type and part in the form of his spectacles. The allusion is to Foto-Auge ('photo-eye'), a book published in Germany in 1929 to mark the Stuttgart 'Film und Foto' exhibition, at which Cecil Beaton was the only British photographer to be exhibited.
Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top
- A Question of Identity: Self-Portrait Photographs 1850-2000 (20 September 2005 - 29 January 2006)
Events of 1930back to top
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