The Stones and their Scene, Proud Chelsea - exhibition review

As Glastonbury prepares for mud and the Rolling Stones, the Proud Gallery is recapturing the band’s earliest days through a collection of unfamiliar black and white photographs

Mirror, mirror: Keith Reflection, 1964 — the photographer Eric Swayne is visible in Richards’s sunglasses

BY Sue Steward 

As Glastonbury prepares for mud and the Rolling Stones, the Proud Gallery is recapturing the band’s earliest days through a collection of unfamiliar black and white photographs of them and their Swinging Sixties contemporaries, some of the most beautiful women of the day.

Eric Swayne’s informal portraits reveal his closeness to the musicians, singers, models and fashion designers. A fresh-faced, grinning Mick Jagger hanging in the window alongside the Lolita-like Jane Birkin sitting on a wall by the Seine contributes to an unfolding era. The little-known Swayne makes a small appearance in the lenses of Keith Richards’s trendy mirror sunglasses.
His close-up studio sessions with Catherine Deneuve, Patti Boyd and Birkin are presented against Irving Penn-influenced grey mist and Avedon white backgrounds, while the romantic scene of Deneuve and her new husband, David Bailey, sitting in a park and ignoring the camera fits beautifully against the tender moment when the cool Charlie Watts rests his hand on his wife’s neck.
Marking another significant angle on the pop days is the fashion element.
Swayne’s visit to designer Mary Quant’s King’s Road flat captures the new miniskirt and the young model Grace Coddington, who appears in a close-up portrait displaying Vidal Sassoon’s radical new haircut.
These resurrected archival images keep turning up; this exhibition is the result of the discovery by Tom Swayne, Eric’s son, of “an unseen trove”.