Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer

Saturday 26 January to Saturday 13 April 2013:

In 1960 Ida Kar became the first photographer to have a retrospective exhibition at a major London art gallery. Despite receiving public and critical acclaim from her contemporaries, she is surprisingly unknown today, yet she was instrumental in encouraging the acceptance of photography as a fine art and her subjects included some of the most celebrated figures from the literary and art worlds of 1950s and 1960s Europe and Russia.

This exhibition will be drawn from the Ida Kar Archive, acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1999 and will include around 40 of her portraits. A number of the artists Kar photographed are represented in the Museum's permanent collections and selected works by them will also be on display.