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Daniel Day-Lewis

2 of 5 portraits of Daniel Day-Lewis

© The Douglas Brothers

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Daniel Day-Lewis

by The Douglas Brothers
platinum print, August 1989
19 5/8 in. x 15 3/4 in. (500 mm x 400 mm) image size
Given by The Douglas Brothers, 2015
Primary Collection
NPG P1998

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This serene and introspective portrait of Daniel Day Lewis was published in Mirabella magazine on the occasion of his BAFTA and Oscar-winning performance in the film My Left Foot. The Brothers underexposed the negative and experimented in the darkroom to make the image even darker, until the actor’s features were barely visible. They likened the portrait to ‘a ghost emerging out of fog’.

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Current affairs

96 people are crushed to death at the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield. The accident took place when Liverpool fans were all let into the stadium at once. Incoming crowds crushed people against a fence used to prevent pitch-invasions. Following the Taylor Report into the incident standing terraces and fences between fans and pitch were banned.

Art and science

Following the publication of Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses in 1988, the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, announces that the book is 'blasphemous against Islam' and places a fatwah (death sentence) on Rushdie, who is forced into hiding for several years.

International

The Berlin Wall is dismantled, reunifying East and West Germany and symbolising the end of the Cold War. Following a decision to allow East Berliners to cross the border with valid visas, crowds swarmed the border crossings. Guards soon gave up trying to stop them, and the physical dismantlement of the wall soon began.
Approximately 2,000 Chinese demonstrators are massacred in Tiananmen Square while protesting against the government.

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