Well-known faces as photographed by iconic girls photographers – these beautiful celeb portraits are a must-see

From Hollywood icons to Yoko Ono, Vivienne Westwood and Amy Winehouse, a brand new exhibition at Hundred Heroines explores how girls photographers have helped create and sometimes strip away the mythology of celeb.

For a long time the digital camera has performed a starring function in shaping celeb and the picture of celebrities from the rigorously contoured golden age of Hollywood glamour to up to date portraits that peek beneath the general public masks. Stardust: 100 years of stage, display screen and celeb, a brand new exhibition at Hundred Heroines in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, explores that relationship by the work of ladies photographers whose photographs have helped outline how fame appears to be like.

The free exhibition opens within the images charity and museum’s new and larger house threading collectively portraits from music and society, stage and display screen. Included within the solid is Vivien Leigh, Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich showing alongside newer portraits by internationally acclaimed photographer and Amateur Photographer journal’s 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Jillian Edelstein. Images from the Elisabeth Buchmeyer Lewis archive additionally on present embrace Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin, with some pictures being proven publicly for the primary time.

Women behind the well-known faces

The exhibition is a 100 yr journey of fixing faces and photographic types, which collectively emphasize that celeb has all the time depended upon a level of collaboration between sitter, photographer and viewers. ‘Photography is a powerful medium for creating public identities. This is the perfect opening exhibition for our new gallery. It’s a celebration of the exceptional girls who photographed the well-known faces of the 20th century, and offers us the prospect to share a number of the hidden gems in our archive,’ says Del Barrett, curator and founding father of Hundred Heroines.

Hundred Heroines is the UK’s solely museum and charity devoted to girls in images. It has made it its mission to deliver missed girls photographers again into public view. By inserting celebrated names in entrance of the lens alongside the much less celebrated girls behind it, Stardust continues that initiative.

Collaboration

Hundred Heroines has once more partnered with Sisters of the Lens, for the exhibition’s historic content material, an organisation devoted to researching and selling early girls photographers. Stardust attracts on Hundred Heroines’ rising assortment of unique prints by early Twentieth-century European photographers, together with work by figures similar to Lallie Charles, Dorothy Wilding and Madame D’Ora.

Many pictures inevitably ooze nostalgia however beneath that reveal how subtle the development of a celeb had grow to be at a time when the studio portrait was a central cog within the mechanism of fame. Carefully composed photographs reworked actors and performers into icons circulated throughout the globe in magazines, newspapers and publicity campaigns.

Beyond the masks of fame

Jillian Edelstein, the exhibition’s headline artist strikes a special be aware along with her portraits together with Yoko Ono, Vivienne Westwood, Amy Winehouse, Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Moss and Sandra Oh. ‘When Hundred Heroines approached me to take part, saying yes was an easy decision! Seeing my own work exhibited alongside that of Lallie Charles, Dorothy Wilding and Madame D’Ora has been an honour. My portraits included right here mirror the humanity behind the masks of celeb, the particular person behind the persona. We see them as greater than the celebrity, greater than the hype of modern-day fame. They grow to be actual and infinitely extra shifting because of this,’ says Edelstein.

A portrait can manufacture mythology or reinforce the picture that made somebody well-known however it may well additionally puncture it. That concept offers an intriguing proposition all through Stardust and exhibits a portrait may also seize vulnerability, eccentricity or character that challenges what we expect we all know in regards to the topic.

Stardust in Nailsworth

Split throughout two websites, on the new Hundred Heroines Photo Museum, guests can discover unique pictures, studio materials and interpretive shows. The Art Garden in close by Mortimer Gardens presents a collection of Edelstein’s celeb portraits in an across the clock outside setting. The exhibition additionally marks a brand new chapter for Hundred Heroines. Closer to Nailsworth city centre and organized throughout one accessible stage, its new house expands the organisation’s public programme and to welcome a broader viewers.

Ultimately Stardust is an exhibition about trying on the well-known faces we recognise and the ladies photographers who made them seen. The enduring energy of a portrait will help flip an individual into an icon however often return the icon to being an individual.

Stardust: 100 years of stage, display screen and celeb runs from 11 September to twenty November 2026 at Hundred Heroines Photo Museum, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, with further outside works at The Art Garden, Mortimer Gardens. Entry is free.

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