Born: 1908 Tambov, Russian Empire (now Russia)
Died: 1974 London, England
Year of Migration to the UK: 1945
Other name/s: Ida Karamian, Ida Karamanian
Biography
Photographer Ida Kar was born Ida Karamian (or Karamanian) to Armenian parents in Tambov in the Russian Empire (now Russia) in 1908. Her early childhood was spent in Russia and Persia (now Iran) and the family eventually settled in Alexandria, Egypt, when she was 13, where she was educated at the local Lycée Français. In 1928 she was sent to Paris to study medicine and chemistry although she soon switched to music, taking courses in singing and the violin. Much of her time was spent working and socialising with avant-garde writers and artists, amongst whom was the German photographer and Surrealist painter Heinrich Heidersberger, at whose side Kar made her first photographic experiments, also becoming interested in left-wing politics. After a move to Cairo to establish her first photographic studio with her husband Edmond Belali, Kar exhibited examples of her surrealist photographs in the Egyptian capital. Following her divorce, she met and married the British writer, artist, and publisher Victor Musgrave.
In 1945, the couple moved to London, where Musgrave was appointed manager of an art gallery off the Charing Cross Road established by the painter John Christoforou, where Kar set up her studio on one of the upper floors. In 1947 she began working as a theatrical photographer, making high-contrast, tightly cropped commercial portraits of actors. In addition, she gained access to the studio of sculptor Jacob Epstein and photographed several of his sitters including Somerset Maugham, whose resulting portrait was published in The Observer in 1951. Musgrave subsequently reopened Christoforou's gallery as Gallery One, which, in 1956, moved to D'Arblay Street in Soho. Despite the change of locale, Kar continued to work from a studio above the gallery, remembered by one assistant as 'very old fashioned: an attic at the top of the house, with a red silk-covered chaise longue, where Ida spent a lot of time behind a plate camera with her head under a cloth'(as cited in Dennison 2001, p. 6). Commissions from magazines such as Tatler followed, and Kar's reputation grew. Her subjects included many of the most celebrated European and Russian cultural figures of the day, among them artists George Braque, Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Bridget Riley and Gino Severini, and writers Iris Murdoch and Jean-Paul Sartre. Her portraits had a distinct quality: dramatically lit, preferably with natural light, and making use of bold contrasts. Her aim, according to her only female assistant, Julie Green, was 'to find the essence of the person in a single photograph. She really did want to get an idea of their approach to their art and worked hard to encapsulate it'. Kar made a conscious decision not to pursue facile glamour; she also refused to retouch negatives and never pandered to the vanity of her sitters. In 1954, Gallery One hosted a well-received exhibition of her portraits, Forty Artists from London and Paris, which included perceptive and sympathetic studies of the artists Stanley Spencer, Tsugouharu Foujita, Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray and Le Corbusier. This was followed in 1960 by Ida Kar: An Exhibition of Artists and Writers in Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, her first solo photographic show to be held at a major London public gallery, showcasing her simple, dramatic and often confrontational portraits, often placing her sitters within their studios or homes, used only natural lighting and showed none of the glamour of earlier portrait photography, also sometimes including Surrealistic elements. The exhibition was not only well received but also led to a critical debate on the status of photography as art, with Kar herself commenting: 'I hope many of you accept that photography can be an art provided that the photographer is an artist'.
This critical acclaim bolstered Kar's self-belief and her conviction of herself as an artist of note but she found it difficult to repeat her earlier success, continuing to crave recognition as an artist and to struggle financially. After a trip to Cuba in 1964, she began to show signs of acute manic depression, paranoia, and obsessive behaviour. She separated from her husband in 1969, afterwards suffering a series of mental breakdowns, during which she was frequently hospitalised. She died in London, England in 1974, almost friendless and forgotten. Today her highly acclaimed work is represented in numerous major collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Related books
- Matthew Dennison, 'Ida Kar: the Greatest Photographer You've Never Heard of', The Times, 19 February 2011, p. 6
- Susan Bright, 'Kar [formerly Karamian], Ida', in H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
- Clare Freestone and Karen Wright, Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2001)
- Penelope Rosemont, Surrealist Women: an International Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998)
- Val Williams, Ida Kar: Photographer (London: Virago Press, 1989)
- Mark Gerson, ‘Ida Kar at the Knoedler Gallery’, British Journal of Photography, 14 January 1983, pp. 50–55
- Ida Kar and Helmut Gernsheim, Ida Kar in Cuba (London: Hamiltons Gallery, 1965)
- Nathaniel Tarn, 'Ida Kar in Cuba', Tribune, Vol. 29, 12 February 12 1965, p. 15
- A. Bowness, ‘The Photographs of Ida Kar’, Motif, a Journal of the Visual Arts No. 9 (Summer 1962)
- 'Pictures for Moscow', The Tatler and Bystander, Vol. 243, 21 March 1962, pp. 684-686
- Colin MacInnes, Ida Kar, exhibition catalogue (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1960)
- Bernard Kops, 'My People and the Whitechapel Art Gallery', Tribune, 1 April 1960, p. 6
Public collections
Related web links
- Interview with Les Smithers, one of Ida`s photographer friends
- Wikipedia entry
- Ida Kar: Behind The Scenes by Clare Freestone
Selected exhibitions
- Ida Kar: Portraits of F.N. Souza, Grosvenor Gallery (2011)
- Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer, National Portrait Gallery (2001)
- Vintage Photographs by Ida Kar, Knoedler Gallery (1982)
- Ida Kar in Cuba, Hamiltons Gallery (1965)Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham (1964)
- Ida Kar: An Exhibition of Artists and Writers in Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1960)
- Forty Artists from London and Paris, Gallery One (1954)
