Untitled (Hat), c 1960s

Terence Donovan’s unique vintage gelatin silver contact print framed in a beautiful and elegant black wooden frame. The contact prints are small photographs made by laying the negative directly onto the surface of the light sensitive paper.

Terence Donovan meticulously reviewed his contact sheets, indicating his selected frames by piercing them with a pen or marking them with a chinagraph pencil. He discarded the contact prints of the frames he did not want used, keeping only those that he felt good enough to print or publish. Many also tell the story of their history – they bear crop marks, printing instructions or layout comments – the artist’s physical touch.

Atlas is offering these small, original contact prints of single frames (some more than sixty years old) which were kept with Donovan’s negatives and remain in his archive. As well as being beautiful objects in their own right, they provide an important insight into Terence Donovan’s working process and give us vital information about which shots he felt were most successful from the many photographs he took during his career.

Terence Donovan (1936–1996) was one of the foremost photographers of his generation, with a career spanning almost 40 years. He came to prominence in London as part of a postwar renaissance in art, design and music, representing a new force in fashion and, later, advertising and portrait photography. Donovan operated at the heart of London’s swinging sixties, both as participant in and observer of the world he so brilliantly and incisively captured with his camera. Gifted with an unerring eye for the iconic as well as the transformative, Donovan was a master of his craft, a technical genius who pushed the limits of what was possible with a camera.

Please allow 1–2 weeks for shipping.