Please Sir, May I shoot you?

Associated media

'BEAKS' at the Pasmore Gallery, Harrow 12 June 2014

Henry Kenyon, 17, a pupil at Harrow School, is staging his first one-man show, 'BEAKS', on Thursday 12 June 2014 at the Pasmore Gallery at Harrow School.

The exhibition is a collection of 27 black-and-white photographic portraits of teachers, or beaks, as they are known at the school, all shot, one after another, on a single day earlier this year.

Harrow has a great tradition of photography - Fox Talbot, the founder of modern photography, Cecil Beaton, Patrick Lichfield and Hugo Burnand, the Royal Wedding photographer, are amongst its old boys.

‘I was inspired by David Bailey’s Stardust exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Especially by the way in which he captures a complete personality in a single image’, explains Kenyon, who transformed a squash court at school into a photographic studio and corralled the teachers into a succession of 15-minute sittings.

 ‘I was incredibly lucky that the beaks totally entered into it, bringing favourite hats, dogs, tea cups, to make it really personal.’