Leica Gallery London celebrates five decades with fashion icons, photographic legends, and rare vintage prints

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To mark 50 years of Leica Galleries, Leica Gallery London is set to present a striking celebration of photographic history, bringing unseen large-scale works by Lillian Bassman to this year’s Photo London, while also unveiling a rare exhibition of vintage Brian Duffy portraits at its Mayfair gallery.

It is a fitting way to honour five decades since the opening of the very first Leica Gallery in Wetzlar, with two showcases that underline the enduring cultural pull of both the brand and the photographers who helped define its legacy.

At Photo London, now taking place at its new home in Kensington Olympia, Leica Gallery London will focus on the extraordinary work of American photographer, art editor, and painter Lillian Bassman.

The presentation will centre on unseen oversized fashion portraits, images that emerged after her work was revisited in the early 1990s by fashion photography curator and art historian Martin Harrison while staying at her home. That rediscovery prompted Bassman to return to her archive, reworking negatives and revisiting the bleaching and toning techniques she had first experimented with back in the 1940s.

The results were images Bassman described as “reinterpretations”, atmospheric and painterly works that felt both timeless and ahead of their time. With their high-contrast tones, ghostly elegance, and beautifully abstract quality, they introduced her work to a whole new audience and sparked a major revival of her career. What followed were gallery shows, museum exhibitions, and a renewed international appreciation of a photographer whose vision had always stood apart from the crowd.

Her later years saw an extraordinary run of recognition, including a joint retrospective with her husband Paul Himmel at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, a solo show at Hamiltons Gallery in London, exhibitions at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, and, in 1996, a final haute couture assignment for The New York Times Magazine.

Inspired by the photographers she published during her time at Harper’s Bazaar, names such as Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, and Louis Faurer, Bassman’s work is defined by its dreamy sophistication, slender couture silhouettes, and darkroom experimentation using tissue, gauze, and bleach to shape tone and mood. The grand-scale prints shown by Leica were produced in collaboration with master printer Chuck Kelton when Bassman was already in her mid-eighties, which only adds to their quiet sense of wonder.

Alongside Bassman’s work, Leica will also present a small group of vintage Lith prints by Deborah Turbeville, shot in 1975 and referenced in Diana Vreeland’s book Allure. These will sit beside a carefully chosen selection of vintage and special prints by some of Leica’s most celebrated photographers, including Bruce Davidson, Terry O’Neill, Eve Arnold, Steve McCurry, William Klein, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Together, the display feels not just like an exhibition, but a celebration of Leica’s wider photographic heritage.

Back in Mayfair, Leica Gallery London will open SHOT – Photographs by Brian Duffy from 9 May until 9 July, giving collectors a rare opportunity to acquire vintage prints by one of the defining photographic voices of the 1960s. For the first time, some of Duffy’s most famous images will be available as rare vintage printings, offering a glimpse into the work of a photographer whose influence stretched far beyond fashion pages and into the wider visual identity of an era.

Of Irish descent and a member of the so-called Black Trinity alongside David Bailey and Terence Donovan, Duffy brought energy, attitude, and technical brilliance to everything he photographed. Originally trained at art school before studying dress design, he first worked as an illustrator for Harper’s Bazaar, only turning to photography after seeing a contact sheet and realising just what a camera could do.

His first commission came from Vogue editor Audrey Withers, and it had to be shot on a Leica at the request of the sitter, who had recently suffered a stroke and needed a quieter camera. From there, Duffy built a career photographing women, portraiture, and solving visual problems with an ease that made him one of the most revered photographers of his generation.

Sitters in the exhibition include Michael Caine, David Hockney, Jean Shrimpton, Grace Coddington, Len Deighton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Harry Secombe.