“I’ve never been intimidated by them. I don't suffer from thinking, that person is a star. They’ve got their job. I’ve got mine. If they’re pleasant so much the better.” Angela Allen’s lifetime in film has found her working closely with some of the most iconic figures in 20th-century entertainment, from matinee idols to gnarled silverscreen pros. Of the 75 pictures on which she was script supervisor, this selection of photographs from her personal album gives some sense of her long and distinguished contribution to cinema, including the occasional bit of body double work when no other Read more ...

Charlotte MacMillan took photographs of the first new full-length ballet at The Royal Ballet for 16 years, Christopher Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which premiered last night at the Royal Opera House. Designs are by Bob Crowley, lighting by Natasha Katz, projection design by Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington. Music by Joby Talbot, scenario by Nicholas Wright. See theartsdesk's review of last night's world premiere.Performers in this cast include Sarah Lamb (Alice), Federico Bonelli (Jack), Jonathan Howells (White Rabbit), TamaraRojo (Queen of Hearts), Simon Russell Beale ( Read more ...

If you’ve seen pictures of the Ballets Russes, then you’ve seen Hoppé photographs. But then, if you’ve seen any society pictures from the 1920s and 1930s, then you’ve seen Hoppé. And famous writers. In fact, for portrait photography in Britain between the World Wars, you can pretty well bet the photo is Hoppé’s. But what's so good about this new exhibition is that it shows a side to Hoppé that is much less well-known - the street-view. And these photographs are thrilling, in form as well as content.E.O. (for Emil Otto) Hoppé moved to Britain from his native Germany in 1902, aged 22, and Read more ...

We usually leave art award controversies to the Turner Prize at Tate Britain. So it’s a surprise to hear that the National Portrait Gallery has stepped up to the plate with their annual Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. And if you’ve already seen the exhibition, we’re not talking about any eyebrows that might have been raised over second prize-winner Panayiotis Lamprou’s rather revealing portrait of his young wife.The gallery, which houses royal portraits from the earliest Tudors to Princes William and Harry, as well as photographs and paintings of more recent public figures and Read more ...

Whether it’s consolation, stimulation, or just some old-fashioned romance you’re after this Valentine’s Day, theartsdesk’s team of writers (with a little help from a certain Bard from Stratford) have got it covered. Exhibitions to stir the heart, music to swell the soul, and comedy to help recover from both – we offer our pick of the most romantic of the arts. So from Giselle to Joe Versus the Volcano, from Barthes to the Bard, theartsdesk celebrates the many-splendoured thing that is love. Judith FlandersValentine’s Day might not seem the ideal day to give your loved one a break-up Read more ...

"There's a similarity between being a soldier and a photographer. They are both looking intensely for the moment." Bran Symondson would know. He served with the British Army in Afghanistan before returning to document the world of the Afghan National Police. A less sensitive photographer might have alighted on the parallel between the action of a rifle barrel and a camera lens. But Symondson's pictures visit a perilous environment where, like that tiny butterfly in All Quiet on the Western Front, a fragile beauty survives and even prospers.These images bring back a different story from the Read more ...

The first thing to make clear is that Robert Mapplethorpe, notorious for his photograph of himself with a bullwhip up his arse, is not really a photographer: he is a sculptor who works in the medium of photography. What else can explain the marble and ebony of his chiselled subjects, or the fact that most of the works selected for this show as responses to Mapplethorpe are sculptures?The Derrick Cross series is a perfect example. A nude, athletic black model looks like he has been hacked out of marble and then smoothed to a sheen by a loving creator, and the simple, still setting Read more ...

The show opens with his iconic 1991 piece, My Hands are My Heart, a double photograph of Orozco’s naked torso. In the first photograph his hands clutch a hidden object at chest-height; in the second the hands splay open to present to the viewer a piece of clay, now impressed with his fingermarks in the shape of a heart. In two simple images, Orozco encapsulates the artist’s act of creation, and then of offering the creation to the viewer. It is simple, and touching in its simplicity.Much of his work relies on this type of essentialism: he uses found materials, recycled objects, to make Read more ...

One of the best things about a Cindy Sherman show is you never know what you’re going to get. And in this exhibition, of a new series of "Untitled" images, what you get is very surprising indeed. Sherman's photographs are not about her, but they are always her. Sherman has always used herself – or "herself", a manipulated, redacted representation – as the canvas on which she works. This time, however, the canvas itself has changed.For the first time, instead of framed photographs, Sherman has produced gigantic photographic murals, murals that take up two rooms of the 18th-century house Read more ...

Colin Jones was part of a legendarily painful triangle. Married to one of the greatest of ballerinas, Lynn Seymour, but constantly edged aside by the brilliant choreographer who was obsessed with her, Kenneth MacMillan, Jones left ballet to become a photographer, and used his unique access and friendships with people such as Rudolf Nureyev to document in unheard-of intimacy and freshness the golden era of the Royal Ballet. Ballet stars in the 1960s were as huge as pop stars, but behind even the most dazzling fame, they were leading the earthy, practical, hardworking lives of touring dancers. Read more ...

Rudy and Margot do intensely serious barre in an Italian garden, Lynn Seymour enjoys a "Loyal Ballet" poster on a 1962 Japanese tour, in Glasgow two ballet girls snatch some rest in uncomfortable chairs. The real world of ballet, as shot by the insider who became a world photographer, Colin Jones. Read the interview with him, describing the friendships and tragic dramas behind the exhibition of 50 years of his ballet pictures at Proud Chelsea Gallery - events as turbulent as anything onstage. All photographs © Colin Jones/Arenapal.com. Click on an image to enter full view and slideshow. [bg Read more ...

Ever since Catfish appeared in the States earlier in the year, debate has been raging about its bona fides. On the face of it an ingenious documentary playing smartly with the potential and pitfalls of social networking and the nature of personal identity in the cyber age, the film has triggered cries of “foul” from a number of critics and viewers. Morgan Spurlock, who made the junk-food odyssey Super Size Me, has called Catfish “the best fake documentary I’ve ever seen”.This is denied by film-makers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, who chose as their subject matter Ariel’s brother Yaniv, or Read more ...