02/09/2025
💭 ‘Photographs like this one are my favourites in the archives. They’re so elegant and evocative, and inviting. They draw us in. They’re at the beach, at ease, off-duty, amongst friends. We can almost feel the heat, glimpse the water rolling off hot skin, smell the cigarette smoke, hear their conversation. Eileen Agar’s photograph is a spontaneous snapshot and yet so effortlessly artful. I think of the group, Agar’s photographs of that Mougins summer are my favourites. She had such an interesting, irreverent eye. She was more of an outsider than the others, and perhaps that distance gave her a little more freedom to observe, to look in at the group, to capture their dynamics. I love that Picasso’s there, but that we see his back. He’s one of the group, part of the community, but he doesn’t dominate the image. Which is how I wanted to write the book. I was determined to have an egalitarian approach, a kind of levelling, to give equal weight to the men and the women, and to the famous and the less well known.’ 💭
📸 Introducing ‘A Vast Horizon’ by Anna Thomasson 📸
Late summer, 1937. Europe is inching towards war. In the South of France, a group of artists, poets, dancers and lovers picnic in the sun. Lee Miller captures them in a photograph that has since become iconic: playful, sensual, intimate.
In A Vast Horizon, Anna Thomasson traces the lives of this extraordinary circle through their art, their friendships, and their defiant pursuit of freedom. From the heady weeks of creativity, s*x and collaboration of that Mediterranean summer through the tumultuous years that followed, it is the story of rebellious lives and the redemptive power of art.
Coming March 2026
