Portrait of Elisabeth Frink

Purkiss is renowned as a portrait photographer who is able to capture the connection between her subjects and their environment. She focuses particularly on artists in their studios, creating rich and intense images full of narrative and feeling. Purkiss has said: “I see photographs as documents of people, recorded in the context of their environment and their time. The interpretation of my subjects, or my part of being creative, lies in selecting the context, the environment and the moment in time”. This photo of Frink was taken at her studio in Woolland, Dorset, March 1990, just before her 60th birthday. The pictures were commissioned by the (short-lived) Sunday Correspondent newspaper and the (no longer existent) Central Office of Information, FCO Overseas Press service. Anne Purkiss recalls “E.F. was prepared for my visit. We had coffee and she took time to talk, to walk in the grounds and look around the studio. Like most artists, she seemed to understand what kind of picture I was aiming for, when I asked her to sit or stand somewhere for a moment. The main difference between my visit to Frink’s studio and other artists I was photographing at the time was, that we talked not only about her work or art in general but also about the shared experience of having children and combining their needs with ones own, i.e. to be creative. Her son Lin Jammet was just about to have an exhibition of his paintings at the Arnolfini in Bristol and I was given an invitation, which I still have. This was very important to her. I remember her for that conversation about our children, for her humanity. I cannot recall her saying anything negative about other artists or their work, unlike many of her male colleagues whom I photographed at the same time”.

1990

Archive quality giclee print

25.0 x 20.0cm

905

© A K Purkiss 2020. Image courtesy of Anne-Katrin Purkiss and The Ingram Collection

This work is part of The Ingram Collection of Modern British & Contemporary Art and was on loan to the Lightbox for the exhibition "Redressing the balance: Women Artists from The Ingram Collection" (11 August - 20 September 2020).