Beeche, Robyn

Australian, 1945–2015

BiographyIn collaboration with countercultural personalities Zandra Rhodes, Vivienne Westwood, Leigh Bowery, and Divine, Australian photographer Robyn Beeche captured the spirit of London’s 1980s fashion scene. Her portraits of post-punk and New Romantic models and performance artists merge theatricality and the tromp l’oeil effects of painting. Working entirely in camera without the aid of digital manipulation, Beech uses creative makeup and sophisticated lighting to transform bodies into sculptural elements. Her images lie in the realm between fashion and art, exploring the androgynous gender-bending identities and cultural transformations of her era.

Beeche showed work throughout Australia and India, where she spent 25 years photographing spiritual traditions and rituals in the pilgrimage town of Vrindavan. Eighty of her fashion portraits are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Beeche is the author of many iconic images, among them, Visage’s Fade to Grey album cover and the inspiration for David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” film clip. A documentary about her life and work Robyn Beeche: A Life Exposed, directed and produced by Lesley Branagan in association with ABC TV, was released in 2013. Beeche died in 2015.