Owen and I spent a few hours this afternoon with some of the famous people of the 20th Century. I didn't know who to spend the most time with... these people have some serious egos innit? Yes Constant Reader we went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the Vanity Fair Portraits Exhibition and I enjoyed it a lot.

Vanity Fair was initially published from 1913 to 1936 when it closed partly due to the Great Depression and in it's time sought to combine the written word with the work of the finest contemporary portrait photographers Edward Steichen, Baron De Meyer, Man Ray and George Hoyningen-Huene.

In 1983, 47 years after it's closure, the times were right for the magazine to be re-launched catching the 'me generation', a new monied class and the rise of the Celebrity culture. Again the written word has been allied with today's finest portrait photographers Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, Steven Meisel and Annie Leibovitz, the photographer most associated with the magazine.
When you consider the phenomenal talents who were either established or coming through in the first VF 23 year period it's no wonder that the exhibition, as Owen pointed out, starts with innovators, trailblazers and genuine legends and ends with celebrity - a telling tale of our times. Indeed it is rather jaw-dropping that the biggest-seller in VF's history is the edition with Jennifer Aniston on the cover.

I ordered the catalogue when I booked the tickets as I knew it was going to be worth dipping into and I'm glad I did. With iconic images of Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, Virginia Woolf, Josephine Baker, Noel Coward, Jean Harlow as well as the fact that Madonna and Vanessa Redgrave are represented twice in the exhibition I was well pleased with it.


One small quibble is they could have picked a more representative solo portrait of Madonna rather than the Testino portrait of her during the filming of EVITA... she has appeared on the most covers after all... either of the above would have been more to my liking.

Still... along with Jean Harlow, how nice that it is M who is the 'face' of the exhibition.