![]() ![]() There’s no denying that Beaton brought to fashion photography a certain intellectual gravitas that was hitherto unseen. For Beaton, who never completely belonged to his own time and society, this turning back of time was euphoric. ![]() ![]() The pictures that he took of Stephen Tennant and his other bohemian friends not only mark the beginnings of his formal photography career, but also exist as invaluable documents of this sub-culture of young men and women who in 1920s London lived a life of grandeur and decadence typical of the 1890s - the decade that shocked the rigid Victorian morality with its hubristic aestheticism, sensuality, and transgressive openness to sexual and political experimentation. When he finally left Cambridge without finishing his degree, he became a part of Bright Young Things, group of young, carefree, rich youngsters who dressed up, posed for pictures, threw parties, drank copiously and were everything Cecil Beaton wanted to be. ![]() Beaton wanted to be free, open, living a life of careless luxury. This was not the life he wanted - this life of studying, rote learning, growing up to run a business. His father was a timber merchant and the Beaton children, Cecil and his three siblings, grew up in comfortable abundance: attending the esteemed Harrow School, and later Cambridge. His relentless search for beauty essentially emerges from a constant feeling of not belonging and dissatisfaction that can perhaps be traced back to his family. ![]()
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