Icons of Pop
1958 - 1999

"The exhibition celebrates the contribution made by British photographers to the visual history of pop music. It aims to highlight the role of the photographer inthe collabrative creation of pop iconography.

As Neil Tennant writes in the exhibition catalogue forward: "For a pop singer or group, being photographed is a vital part of the pop process. The result can be a visual manifesto: this is what we are, what we want to be, where we're from and where we're going; these are out influences; this is what we want to say."

Arranged chronologically [the exhibition shows ...] fifty photographs that span forty years. They represent British pop acts that have taken an interest in promoting their ltalents through innovative portrature by some of the greaatest British photographers of the second half of the twentieth century."
Text courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition brochure.