TERENCE DONOVAN
Terence Donovan began his career in the early 1960s working with leading advertising agencies and fashion and lifestyle magazines of the time, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle. Part of a working class influx into the previously rarefied worlds of fashion, media and the arts, Donovan’s iconoclastic and sometimes irreverent photography established a new visual language rooted in London’s urban environment. He worked for some of the most progressive magazines of the time including Queen, Town and London Life and his images became emblematic of the era. Donovan both documented and helped create the much-mythologised culture of 1960s London. In his later career Donovan concentrated more specifically on advertising and moving image work, while continuing to chronicle contemporary culture.
A retrospective exhibition of his London photographs was held at the Museum of London in 1999 and a large-format anthology of his photographs, Terence Donovan, was published in 2000. In 2012 Terence Donovan Fashion was published, edited by Diana Donovan and David Hillman. His first major retrospective, Terence Donovan: Speed of Light, opened at the Photographer’s Gallery, London in July 2016. Donovan died in 1996.
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