John Deakin

Painter and photographer John Deakin (1912-1972) began his career in the late 1930s. Travelling extensively, including to Paris and Rome, he taught himself photography. Deakin received commissions from a number of magazines and worked for British Vogue in the late 1940s and early 1940s. His best known photographic work are the portraits he took of the circle of literary and artistic figures working in London in the 1950s and 1960s, in particular Francis Bacon. Deakin photographed the artist as well as his friends and lovers, and Bacon would use his photographs as sources for his works on canvas. His portraiture is characterised by its immediacy, achieved through rigorous cropping and tonal contrasts. From the 1960s, Deakin focused almost entirely on painting, and much of his photographic archive was lost or destroyed. 

Retrospective exhibitions of Deakin’s (1912-1972) work have been held at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (1984), the National Portrait Gallery, London (1996) and The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2014).