LEWIS FREDERICK MORLEY (1925 - 2013)
Morley is best remembered for his iconic images of London's swinging 60s, embodied in the portraits of the now infamous Christine Keeler.
Lewis Morley was born in 1925 in Hong Kong to an English father (the colony's chief pharmacist) and Chinese mother. The family was interned at the Stanley Internment Camp during the Japanese occupation between 1941-45. When they were released the Morleys' moved to London where Lewis did two years of National Service before spending three years at Twickenham Art School.
The early 1950s saw Morley move to Paris to paint and study life drawing at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. It was not until taking a job at The Tatler in 1958 that Morley acquired his first professional camera and from that point on, Lewis Morley had discovered his vocation. He photographed models and celebrities who defined the fashion and style of the decade including Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Michael Caine, Charlotte Rampling and Joe Orton.
The shot of Christine Keeler astride a fake Arne Jacobsen chair is one of the most instantly recognisable images of the 20th century. Taken at the height of the sexual revolution and the Profumo affair, this image came to symbolise the societal changes that occurred during the 1960s.
Migrating to Sydney in 1971, Lewis Morley and his family settled in the inner west where he continued to produce both studio and commercial work largely for the designer and long-time friend Babette Hayes. In 1989 the London National Portrait Gallery staged the touring exhibitionLewis Morley: Photographer of the Sixties and his autobiography Black and White Lies was published in 1992.
Major retrospectives of Lewis Morley's works have been held at both the State Library of New South Wales (1993) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.