On 23 March 1960, Ida Kar: An Exhibition of Artists and Writers in Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union, opened at the Whitechapel Gallery; becoming the first solo photographic exhibition ever held by a major London art gallery. 

Kar was born Ida Karamian in 1908 to Armenia parents in Tambov, Russia; 400 kilometres south-east of Moscow. Following the families move to Alexandria, Egypt in 1921, she was educated at the prestigious Lycée Français, and in 1928, encouraged by her father to study medicine and chemistry she moved to Paris, but shortly after her arrival in the French capital, Kar decided to study singing and violin instead. This bought her in to a contact with the bohemian society of the left bank and in particular, the pianist Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil; who would later marry Samuel Beckett. She would introduce Kar, to Heinrich Heidersberger (1906-2006), a young German surrealist painter and photographer; in whose studio Kar would begin to assist, marking the beginning of her own photographic career. This early work, of which no examples are known to have survived, was far removed from the portrait work that she is now best known, and heavily influenced by the surrealist movement so prominent in Paris at the time.

In 1933, Kar returned to her family in Alexandria, where she continued to work as a photographic assistant, and met and married Edmond Belali, a government official and keen amateur photographer. Together they moved to Cairo, where they opened a photographic studio, Idabel (a combination of their names). Cairo at the time had an active surrealist group, which Kar became involved with, exhibiting the work of Idabel, in the Art and Freedom exhibition of 1943 and 1944.

Above Sir Terence Ernest Manitou (Terry') Frost, 1961. (©Ida Kar/Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London).

A young Royal Air Force officer by the name of Victor Musgrave, then stationed in Cairo, was a prominent member of the group, a poet and artist he would change the course of Kar’s life. In 1944, she divorced Belali, and married Musgrave; their home in Darb el-Labana becoming a meeting place for international artists and writers, and the core of an intellectual social scene.

In 1954, the couple moved to London, and a small apartment near Regent’s Park. Marking the beginning of a period that the art critic Jasia Reichardt would later comment on, Kar’s ‘early years in England could have been plotted on a chart with the following headings: perseverance, blundering, despair, hope, frustration.’ She did however stage two exhibitions during the forties — a period in which photography exhibitions remained uncommon, and would continue so throughout the 1950s — the first at the New London Film Society in 1946; and then exhibiting alongside the sculptor Robert Couturier at the Anglo-French Art Centre in 1947.

By the late 1940s, Kar had turned her attention to theatrical portraits, partially as a way of making a living, and the couple moved to 1 Litchfield Street, off Charing Cross Road — and close to bohemian epicentre of Soho — where John Cristoforou had a gallery. Following his departure for France in 1953, Musgrave took over the space opening Gallery One, with are impressive programme that included the first solo shows for F.N. Souza, Gillian Ayers, and the first London exhibition of Yves Klein’s Monochromes. Whilst Kar had her studio on the floor above.

‘It took Kar some time after moving to London to remodel the artistic and literary social scene she had enjoyed with Musgrave in Egypt,’ writes Clare Freestone in Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer. This changed with the move to 1 Litchfield Street, which quickly became a meeting point for writers and artists alike.

Above Georges Braque, 1960. (©Ida Kar/Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London).

A photograph Kar made of Jacob Epstein at work in his studio in 1953, sculpting a bust of Bertrand Russell, became one of the photographers first images to be syndicated by the photographic agency Camera Press, which had been established by Tom Blau (1912-1984)) in 1947, and represented the work of Yosuf Karsh (1908-2002), as well as Kar’s contemporary rival and Jane Bown. 

‘The year 1954 was one of great creative activity,’ remarks Freestone, seeing Kar making portraits of Lynn Chadwick, John Piper, L.S. Lowry, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti, and Joan Miró, amongst others. Many of these images formed the exhibition, Forty Artists from London and Paris, which opened at Gallery One, on 12 October. ‘This is a fascinating and entertaining show,’ reported Art News and Review, ‘and if so many creative faces, exposed within such modest confines, leave the visitor slightly fatigued, it can only be counted a tribute to Miss Kar’s unerring gift for extracting so much of her subjects personality.’ In March 1956, Gallery One, and with it Kar’s studio moved to larger premises at 20 D’Arblay Street, in the very heart of Soho. 

In 1957, Kar purchased a Rolleiflex that was well suited to the more documentary stories that she was increasingly undertaking, and she also returned to Armenia for the first time since her childhood, undertaking a commission for Tatler & Bystander, that was published on 8 October 1958 under the title, Return to Armenia, She also staged an exhibition of her work in the capital Yerevan —now Erevan — during August, as well as taking the opportunity to visit her now elderly parents, during which she made a portrait of her father Melkon, that would become one of the photographers favourite portraits.

During the following year, Kar travelled to Moscow and Sweden, and in 1959 she returned once more to Armenia and Moscow, as well as East Germany, and held an exhibition at the Zentrale Haus der Deutsch-Sowjetischen Freundschaft (Central House of German-Soviet Friendship); but it was London where her career had what Freestone calls the ‘principal opportunity to thrive.’ 

Above Dame Barbara Hepworth at work on the armature of a sculpture in the Palais de Danse, 1961. (©Ida Kar/Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London).

Three of her photographs had been exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1957 as part of a group exhibition, but following a chance meeting at one of the many parties she held when returning from her overseas trips, she met Bryan Robertson, director of the Whitechapel Gallery, he would offer Kar the opportunity to exhibit at the gallery. He later wrote to her, ‘Dear Ida, This is to confirm, subject to the approval of my trustees, that I shall be delighted to organise a large exhibition of your photographic work at this Gallery in 1960.’

During its five-week run, Ida Kar: An Exhibition of Artists and Writers in Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union, received 10,000 visitors, and received great critical acclaim, with Winifred Carr writing in the Daily Telegraph, ‘Photography... is being accepted by the rarefied world of serious art... this is the first time a photographer has actually been invited by an art gallery to give a show,’ whilst Eric de Maré, writing for The Observer, said, ‘The photographs are brilliant and large, some being over four feet wide, revealing beyond further argument that on rare occasion photography can rise to the level of art in its own right.’

The presentation of the exhibition, which saw Kar’s unframed photographs arranged in an ‘irregular but structured formation on white walls,’ was influenced by Edward Steichen’s (1879-1973), seminal exhibition The Family of Man, which had been shown at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1956. Kar wrote to Roberston shortly before the exhibition hanging, saying, ‘Believe me we are going to make this show the most exciting photographic event since The Family of Man.’ The bold presentation of Kar’s work set a precedent for subsequent photographic exhibitions, writes Freestone, ‘including a Cecil Beaton retrospective designed by Richard Buckle and held at the National Portrait Gallery in 1968.’ 

Above Dame Margaret Natalie (Maggie) Smith on the set of 'The Rehearsal', 1961. (©Ida Kar/Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London).

In April 1962, seventy-six of the large-scale prints which where exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery, where shown at Moscow’s House of Friendship; where once again Kar’s work was received with critical acclaim, with Tatler describing her as ‘that rare thing — the artist photographer,’ whilst Harper’s Bazaar when further still, suggesting that she was ‘almost certainly Britain's top photographer.’ In May 1963 Ida Kar: Artist with a Camera opened at the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. 

January 1964 bought an invitation by the Cuban government to attend the fifth anniversary of the Cuban revolution, the work Kar produced there was exhibited the following year at Hamiltons Gallery, and forms what Freestone describes as, ‘the last publicly recognised creative phase of her career, and move towards a documentary style in accordance with the changing fashions in photography.’

Her open relationship with Musgrave, was increasingly strained during the closing years of the sixties — a decade marked by ever increasing bouts of depression — and whilst they had previously spent periods of time living apart, in 1969 they entered a period of separation that would continue until her death. Despite her failing heath and periods of hospitalisation, Kar remained committed to her work, and in 1974, she began a series of nudes, utilising a make-shift studio in her small bedsit at 47 Inverness Terrace, Bayswater; she had also began to record her autobiography — although these tapes are now lost — when on 24 December she died alone, after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage.

Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer is published by the National Portrait Gallery, London.