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From cathedrals to Cuba: The year in photography

23 December 2016

Faye Dunaway: The morning after the Oscars

Faye Dunaway at the Beverly Hills Hotel, 29 March 1977 | Terry O'Neill / Getty Images

The real story is the next day, when they realise suddenly they’re getting all these offers to do films, their value goes from $100,000 to $10 million, and they’re just sort of stunned.
Terry O'Neill

In February, BBC Arts took the opportunity to look back at some of the most memorable moments from the Oscars.

In 1977 Faye Dunaway finally won a Best Actress Oscar, for her performance in Network, having been nominated two years earlier for Chinatown and in 1968 for Bonnie and Clyde. Terry O’Neill, one of the British photographers who, along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, captured the 1960s, took this 6am photograph of Dunaway poolside at the Beverley Hills Hotel. O’Neill and Dunaway later married, in 1983, and stayed together until 1987.

One of the newspapers at Dunaway's feet is the Los Angeles Times showing the headline 'Posthumous Oscar for Finch'. Her co-star Peter Finch, who played "mad as hell" news anchor Howard Beale, had died two months prior to being awarded the Best Actor Oscar - he suffered a heart attack in the lobby of the same hotel.

Behind the scenes of Fidel Castro's Cuba

Castro relaxes at a villa on the Isle of Pines, 1965 © 2016 Lee Lockwood/ TASCHEN.

Even the most pessimistic suspended their 20th Century cynicism and saw Fidel Castro as a legendary hero.
Lee Lockwood

American photojournalist Lee Lockwood spent 10 years charting the success of the Cuban revolution and the establishment of a communist state.

Fidel Castro, the leader of that revolution and then Prime Minister (later, President) of Cuba who died in November this year, granted Lockwood unrivalled access in the early years of communist Cuba, allowing him to capture this soon-to-disappear world.

Elephants and their mahouts in Thailand

Chiang Mai, Thailand © Steve McCurry / Magnum Photos

From shepherds in Africa to teenagers in Paris, each image displays a strength of connection between subject and the eye behind the lens.

The Magnum agency's portfolio of world-class photographers have captured the major events and minor moments of the modern world for over 70 years. A BBC Arts feature showcased images from a new collection, Conditions of the Heart: On Empathy and Connection in Photography, which presents a back catalogue by some of the agency’s finest photographers. Steve McCurry took this photograph:

"I photographed these elephants and their mahouts at a rescue sanctuary in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The mahouts dedicate their lives to caring for a specific elephant, spending their days and nights tending to all of the elephant's needs."

Trainspotting: Shooting the graffiti art of New York's subway cars

Composite of photographs of subway cars in New York | Images © Henry Chalfant

Who has the right and privilege to decide what the public will see every day?
Henry Chalfant

The colourful graffiti which adorned the exteriors of New York's subway cars in the 1970s and ‘80s was treated as vandalism by the authorities. But for Henry Chalfant, a sculptor who had majored in classical Greek, it represented raw beauty.

Picking up his camera, he decided to document this ephemeral but fascinating period of brilliant urban art. Now considered one of the foremost authorities on New York subway graffiti - with an archive to back up the claim - Chalfant talked BBC Arts through some of his best shots.

Altar-ed images: England's cathedrals on film

Detail of Durham Cathedral © Peter Marlow / Magnum Photos

In order to differentiate each place... I adopted the simple strategy of photographing the naves looking along the central axis.
Peter Marlow

After a celebrated career in photojournalism working for the agencies Sygma and Magnum, and a move into portraiture for The Sunday Times, renowned photographer and chronicler Peter Marlow died in February this year while completing work on his upcoming exhibition The English Cathedral, which opened in April at Coventry Cathedral.

After completing a commission to photograph six English cathedrals for a collection of Royal Mail stamps, Marlow was inspired to continue and photograph all 42 Church of England cathedrals. In doing so, the simplicity of the approach and techniques he applied not only recorded the architectural beauty of each venue but captured them as spaces dedicated to contemplation, devotion and reflection.

Shooting a turning point in British culture

Bagga (Bevin Fagan), lead singer of British reggae band Matumbi, with the son of Dennis Bovell, founder of the band, Hackney, East London, 1979 © Syd Shelton, courtesy Autograph ABP

Politics was one of the reasons that I became a photographer and it’s still the driving force in my work.
Syd Sheldon

Rock Against Racism was a groundbreaking movement which staged marches, festivals and concerts from 1976-81 with the aim of fighting racism through music. Activist, photographer and graphic designer Syd Shelton was in the thick of it, shooting performers including The Clash, Aswad, Pete Townshend and Misty in Roots and documenting demonstrations across the UK.

As an exhibition of his photographs from the period went on show in Bradford, Shelton told BBC Arts the stories behind 12 of his favourite shots, and explains how Rock Against Racism was formed as a reaction to the toxic politics of the era.

"This was shot underneath the railway arches near Cambridge Heath Station, which I used to call ‘my studio’ because it had the most perfect available light for portraiture. It was one of the first shots I took that day. Bagga instinctively picked up the bottle and I knew I had a picture."

10 Years with Kate Bush

Kate Bush © Guido Harari

Harari’s association with Bush covered the most interesting decade in her career

Since her debut single Wuthering Heights hit number one in 1978, Kate Bush has been the object of unusually intense adulation and devotion, even as her commercial success diminished. Bush's photographer and collaborator Guido Harari released a book this year as well as staging an exhibition, The Kate Inside, documenting ten years in the singer's career, starting in 1982, featuring many unseen images.

Black and White Jazz

The audience at the 1960 Monterey Jazz Festival © Jim Marshall Photography LLC / Reel Art Press

Integrated audiences were the norm. Nobody cared – as long as you looked sharp and dug the music, anything else was just jiving.
Graham Marsh

A lavish new book, Jazz Festival, released this year celebrated legendary rock photographer Jim Marshall's early work at the Newport and Monterey Jazz Festivals of the 1960s.

600 black-and-white images, most previously unseen, captured not only the musical icons of the time, but the freedom, excitement and intimacy of the events, whose integrated crowds led the way for the civil rights movement.

Jim Morrison falls on stage at The Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in 1968

Photograph © Michael Zagaris Photography LLC / Reel Art Press

At that point in time, The Doors were probably the biggest band in America.

Rock photographer Michael Zagaris didn't just snap the biggest names in '60s and '70s music, he lived the times as well. Zagaris picked ten of his favourite photographs, including this one of Doors frontman Jim Morrison failing to stay vertical, and told BBC Arts the amazing stories behind them.

"Jim prowled the stage like a panther, moving, feigning, growling, singing. He seemed pretty stoned, at one point slipping and falling onto the stage. Rising to his knees he reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder, I thought to steady himself and stand. Instead he leaned over my shoulder and proceeded to throw up, scattering the people behind me. Wow . . . it doesn’t get any better than this!"

Chasing Outlaws

Crossing the Ohio, Louisville, 1966 © Danny Lyon courtesy of Beetles and Huxley

An attempt to record and glorify the life of the American bike rider.
Danny Lyon

In a photographic career that included riding with biker gangs and the casual brutalities of the American penal system, Danny Lyon documented ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

BBC Arts profiled Lyon as an exhibition of his work ran in London during October and November.

Books, Art and Photography in 2016

More from BBC Arts