'Restaurant, Boulevard St Michel', photograph by John Deakin (1912-72), Paris, ca.1954-5

Photograph of diners in a Paris restaurant, on the Boulevard St Michel; the view depicts the diners through the window, with items from the menu hand-written on its surface.

Copyright John Deakin Archive

John Deakin made portraits of celebrities and of his bohemian circle of friends in London's Soho in the early 1950's. Deakin wanted to be a painter rather than a photographer and neglected his photographs: the majority have been destroyed or damaged. In part, his attitude reflected the general status of photography in Britain in the 1950's, as an undervalued artistic medium. After his dismissal from Vogue he photographed street scenes in Paris and Rome. Deakin’s reputation was re-evaluated following an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984.

John Deakin’s photographs of Parisian street life were well received, as this contemporary review from The Times highlights: ‘Mr Deakin has an astonishing eye for the peculiar hidden in the ordinary: where the casual observer sees only a shop-front or the façade of a house, Mr Deakin sees one side of Alice’s looking glass, and the infinite mysteries that lie behind it’.

PH.87-1984