Cecil Beaton — Vogue Portraiture & Wartime Photography

Cecil Beaton turned portraiture into stagecraft. From his first Vogue picture in 1924, he built lavish, theatrical settings — backdrops of crumpled cellophane, aluminium foil, and papier-mâché — in which the sitter became one element of an overall decorative pattern. He photographed royalty, Hollywood, and society with an elegance that was as much set design as photography, and later won Oscars for the costumes and sets of Gigi and My Fair Lady.

During the Second World War the theatricality fell away. Serving as an official photographer for the Ministry of Information, Beaton made spare, humane images of the Blitz and of the war's far-flung fronts — a documentary counterweight to his glittering studio persona.

Much of Beaton's fashion work remains under copyright, but his wartime photographs — Crown Copyright, now expired — are public domain. The embedded image is his own self-portrait made in Puncheng, south-eastern China, during that 1939–45 assignment. To channel Beaton: dress the whole frame, treat the background as an active design surface, and let opulence set the mood.