Rankin Retrospective

Start Date:	31st July 2009
End Date:	18th September 2009

This summer, join Rankin at the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, for the first ever UK retrospective of his work. Bringing together more than 600 images – many of them previously unseen - and a career spanning 22 years, Rankin Retrospective offers an unparalleled survey of Rankin’s work to date and an introduction to a photographer who, perhaps more than any other, has shaped a generation.
At once revealing, shocking, amusing and seductive, Rankin Retrospective is an exhilarating journey through a diverse portfolio. Experience the glamour and glitz of his celebrity portraits; the sweat and sensuality of his erotic work; the mischievousness of his provocative Self Portraits; the intimacy of his Tuuli series; the graphic and luminous style of his fashion and beauty shots; the strength and dignity of his Oxfam images; and his personal family shots.
Rankin Retrospective revisits some of the most outstanding images of our time, and also includes a dynamic live element in which 1000 new faces are added to the show as Rankin shoots in an open studio. From the groundbreaking ‘Nudes’ series, which featured people who answered an advertisement asking how they would like to be photographed, to signature portraits of the Queen, Kate Moss, Tony Blair, and Oasis amongst many others, the exhibition provides an unprecedented opportunity to review a vast and varied oeuvre, and follow the evolution of a career that has always been at the vanguard of the profession.
Few photographers have shot as many of the world’s personalities, models and celebrities as Rankin. But his work has also encompassed international campaigns featuring ordinary people, and has always sought to engage and challenge, questioning prevailing norms and ideas of beauty and generating debate in the process.
Rising to prominence as chief photographer at the court of Cool Britannia, Rankin documented the rogues and royalty of this hyper-confident age, depicting the YBA and Brit Pop scene in his distinctive sharp urban style. The power of these images, which featured in the pages of Dazed & Confused, defined the cultural influence of the magazine he co-founded, and through them, an entire era.
Since the millennium, Rankin’s work has changed in tone and broadened in scope to encompass more intimate personal projects, timeless portraits and charitable work, reflecting both the re-ordered worldview of the Noughties and his own development as a practitioner.
Rankin Retrospective is the summation of the many guises and personalities of a larger than life character, who has dominated and enlivened the British photographic scene for years.
"It is with pride and trepidation that I mount this exhibition. Never before have I faced my own body of work on such a scale. There’s nowhere to hide! However, for me this is one of the most exciting stages in my journey as a photographer. I am grateful to have the opportunity to present the world with summation of so many years’ hard work – and play!" – Rankin.

Images from Rankin Retrospective

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