Bob Collins: Shooting Stars
Past display archive
17 September 2012 - 21 April 2013
Room 31: case display
Free
Eric Sykes
by Bob Collins
1959
NPG x136313
Alma Cogan
by Bob Collins
1963
NPG x136356
Born in 1924, Collins’s first illustrated article appeared in Amateur Photographer in 1952. Four years later he left his job as a watchmaker to pursue a career as a freelance photojournalist. Working primarily in the field of popular entertainment, he documented the rise of singers and radio and television performers such as Tony Hancock, Johnny Ray, Shirley Bassey and Petula Clark. His work frequently appeared in Picture Post, Illustrated and Everybody's Magazine and he contributed illustrated articles for a number of photographic magazines. Focusing on spontaneous human-interest subjects, Collins favoured Microcord, Super Ikonta and Rolleiflex cameras and almost always used electronic flash. Many of his portraits show stars in their dressing rooms or at home; this was in order to get a relaxed and un-posed portrait. In 1982 the Royal Photographic Society held a retrospective exhibition of Collins' work entitled Double Image.
The works in this display have been selected from the Bob Collins collection which was generously donated to the Gallery by John Acton in 2003. The collection comprises vintage prints, film negatives, colour transparencies and scrapbooks compiled by Bob Collins.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Related portraits
- Marion Ryan (NPG x136316)
- Wee Willie Harris with his mother (NPG x136433)
- Harry Corbett with 'Sooty' (NPG x136312)
- Tommy Steele (NPG x136588)
- Robert Shaw (NPG x35156)
- Frankie Vaughan's 30th Birthday at the Palace Theatre (NPG x136319)
- Andrée Melly (NPG x136323)
- Margaret Lockwood; Julia Lockwood (NPG x136364)
- Ronnie Hilton (Adrian Hill) (NPG x136349)
- Benny Hill (NPG x136434)
- Shirley Eaton; Colin Lenton-Rowe (NPG x136444)
- Eric Sykes (NPG x136313)
- Petula Clark (NPG x136327)
- Alma Cogan (NPG x136356)
- David Nixon (NPG x136450)
- Ray Ellington (NPG x136493)
- Eric Morecambe; Ernie Wise (NPG x136451)
- Bob Collins; Cliff Richard (NPG x136437)
- Roger Moore (NPG x136441)
- Adam Faith (NPG x136332)
- Peter Sellers (NPG x136335)
- Johnny Ray (NPG x136328)
Related sitters
- Petula Clark
- Alma Cogan
- Bob Collins
- Harry Corbett
- Shirley Eaton
- Ray Ellington (Ray Brown)
- Adam Faith
- Wee Willie Harris (Charles William Harris)
- Benny Hill
- Ronnie Hilton (Adrian Hill)
- Colin Lenton-Rowe
- Julia Lockwood
- Margaret Lockwood
- Andrée Melly
- Sir Roger George Moore
- Eric Morecambe (Eric Bartholomew)
- David Nixon
- John Alvin ('Johnny') Ray
- Sir Cliff Richard (Harry Webb)
- Marion Ryan
- Richard Henry ('Peter') Sellers
- Robert Shaw
- Tommy Steele
- Eric Sykes
- Frankie Vaughan (Frank Abelson)
- Ernie Wise (Ernest Wiseman)