Photographs by Norman Parkinson [antikvár]

Foreword Twelve years ago, the National Portrait Gallery mounted its first exhibition of photography. A retrospective of almost fifty years of photographs by Cecil Beaton, it enjoyed an unprecedented critical and public success and helped to establish portrait photography as a major area of concern for the Gallery. It also heralded a series of eighteen more photographic exhibitions between 1972 and 1980, divided almost equally between historical and contemporary subjects. For our twentieth photographic exhibition, we have again chosen a photographer whose career has spanned half a century, and who specialises in elegant, glamorous portraiture and fashion: Norman Parkinson. During his five decades as a professional, 'Parks' has always managed to keep a step in front of other photographers, through his command of colour, his use of outdoor locations and his skill at suggesting movement in a still photograph. Above all, he has always been totally dedicated and professional, though never over-earnest. He has shown a remarkable abihty to capture accurately the spirit of the period in which he is working. One can date a Parkinson photograph without much difliculty from its look and feel, as well as from the changes - and growth - in his style. It is rare to be able to arrange an exhibition in decades as Michael Jones has so elegantly done, and be confident that the characters of the pictures in each room will be so clearly differentiated. Norman Parkinson is an extremely busy photographer, his talents more in demand than ever. We are doubly grateful to him, not only for wholeheartedly accepting our suggestion for an exhibition and making his work freely available for it, but for turning his back on a number of assignments over the last few months, so that he could be on hand at every stage of preparation. The result is, I beheve, one of the most colourful, amusing, and altogether pleasurable exhibitions the Gallery has put on in recent years. John Hayes Director National Portrait Gallery, June 1981