Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War at Imperial War Museum London (IWM London)

Widely remembered as the leading British portrait and fashion photographer of his day, Cecil Beaton is best known for his glamorous photographs of royalty and twentieth century celebrities. The fact that Beaton was also one of Britain’s hardest working war photographers during the Second World War is less well known. Commissioned by the Ministry of Information, Beaton took some 7,000 photographs between 1940 and the end of the war, in a body of work that he would later consider to be his most important. From powerful, humanised portraits to abstract ruins, Beaton captured the war in a manner unlike any other photographer, capturing images of leaders and ordinary people, military and civilian life, industry and agriculture, artists and architecture. This major new exhibition explores the impact of the Second World War on Cecil Beaton’s life and work, displaying the full range of Beaton’s wartime work for the very first time, giving visitors a true understanding of the extraordinary wartime achievement of this master of the photographic arts.