Face: Shape and Angle

Born into a civil service family in India in 1907, Helen Muspratt was a lifelong communist, a member of the Cambridge intellectual milieu of the 1930s, and a working mother at a time when such a role was unusual for women of her class. She was also a pioneering photographer, creating an extraordinary body of work in many different styles and genres. In partnership with Lettice Ramsey she made portraits of many notable figures of the 1930s in the fields of science and culture. Her experimental photography using techniques such as solarisation and multiple exposure bears comparison with the innovations of Man Ray and Lee Miller. And her political convictions led her to produce important documentary records of the Soviet Union and of the desperate situation of the unemployed in the Welsh valleys. Critical to her work was a preoccupation with the face - her attention to the 'shape and angle' was what made her an eminent portrait photographer.

This book reproduces some of Helen Muspratt's most important photographic images, showing all the various facets of her practice. The accompanying text by Jessica Sutcliffe is an intimate and revealing memoir of her mother which offers a fascinating insight into her life, work and politics.