The Parking Lot jointly managed by Eric Franck and Elizabeth Smith 61 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF
Tel 4420 7394 9743 Elizabeth@normanparkinson.com Monday - Friday 11am - 5pm ERIC FRANCK FINE ART
Unit 8010 1st floor, 61 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF e.franck@btclick.com Eric Franck Fine Art presents the inaugural opening of its new show room, The Parking Lot. Located in Bermondsey, southeast London, The Parking Lot is Eric Franck's first London showroom.

Devoted to fine art and photography, The Parking Lot will hold exhibitions throughout the year, commencing with a selection of the provocative images of fashion photographer Norman Parkinson.  "Norman Parkinson: Fashion Inside and Out" will include some of the photographer's most compelling imagery.  

Parkinson was active for over fifty years and was a major contributor to Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Queen, and Town and Country, amongst others.  His extensive range of fashion imagery reaches from his early classical work during the 1930s, to his innovative photographic techniques and experimental images from the 1940s through the 1980s.  The exhibition will include an array of his most famous outdoor images demonstrating his innovative practice of taking the model out of the studio and into the street.

Future exhibitions at The Parking Lot will include such classic masters as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Kiichi Asano and Josef Koudelka, as well as contemporary up-and-coming artists including Julia Fullerton-Batten, Beate Gütschow, Philippe Chancel and Hana Jakrlova.  
All work will be available for purchase. In a career that spanned seven decades, Norman Parkinson dazzled the world with his sparkling inventiveness as a fashion photographer. His long association with Vogue, and his numerous assignments for Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country and other international magazines, brought him worldwide recognition. His impulsive and unstructured style changed forever the static, posed approach to fashion photography, while his enchanting, idiosyncratic persona charmed his sitters and projected an alluring and glamorous public image.

Standing at 6 feet 5 inches tall, Parkinson was unable to remain unobtrusive behind the lens and instead created ‘Parks', the moustachioed, ostentatiously elegant fashion photographer – as much a personality as those who sat for him, and frequently more flamboyant.  His flawless professionalism, manners and well-rehearsed eccentricities reassured the uneasy sitter and disarmed the experienced. Parks reinvented himself for each decade of his career, from his groundbreaking spontaneous images of the 1930s, through the war years and the Swinging Sixties to the exotic locations of the 1970s and 1980s. By the end of his life (he died on location in 1990) he had become a household name, the recipient of a CBE, a photographer to the royal family, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and the subject of a large scale retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, London.  

Parkinson work is an unrivalled twentieth-century photographic portfolio. He was an incisive portraitist and photographed many of the greatest icons of the twentieth century as well as some of the world's most beautiful women. Shining through his work is Park's inimitable wit and style, and his unique eye for glamour and beauty.

With thanks to
Colin Webb
Publisher of Portraits in Fashion