//Top: The photographer in A Life Exposed; above: One of Beeche’s arresting images from the show for the McLaren/Westwood collection Nostalgia Of Mud, March 1982//

I’m saddened by the news of the death last week of the great Australian photographer Robyn Beeche.

I can’t claim to have known Beeche well, but was long an admirer and delighted by her charm when we communicated by email, particularly over accessing her archive and featuring photographs of the McLaren and Westwood design partnership in the exhibitions Let It Rock and Art Into Pop last year (too often Beeche’s work in this area has been uncredited or, in a couple of particularly egregious cases, the credit has been claimed by others).

//Vivienne Westwood, Gene Krell and staff outside Nostalgia Of Mud, St Christopher’s Place, central London, 1982. Photo: Robyn Beeche//

//Leigh Bowery and Fat Gill as Miss Fuckit, Alternative Miss World, 1985//

//Scene at Vrindavan//

As shown in Lesley Branagan’s recent documentary A Life Exposed, Beeche had a taste for the unusual and surreal, and was blessed with the gift of capturing extraordinary people and circumstances, from the Alternative Miss World competitions and working with Divine, Steve Strange et al to the colourful festivals in the Indian pilgrimage town of Vrindavan where she made her home in recent decades.

Here is a January 2014 Oyster magazine interview with Beeche about her exhibition Fade To Grey.

And this is the trailer for A Life Exposed:

A Life Exposed: Robyn Beeche trailer from Lesley on Vimeo.

Tags: A Life Exposed, Alternative Miss World, Divine, Fade To Grey, Fat Gill, Gene Krell, Leigh Bowery, Lesley Branagan, Miss Fuckit, Nostalgia Of Mud, Robyn Beeche, Steve Strange, Visage, Vivienne Westwood, Vrindavan