Kasmin's Camera

Enter the bohemian world of legendary gallerist John Kasmin, whose personal photographs captured everyone from Helen Frankenthaler to David Hockney

John Kasmin (born 1934), known to many simply as Kasmin, was Britain’s most important contemporary art dealer of the 1960s. At his eponymous Kasmin Gallery on New Bond Street, he worked with many of the leading British and American artists of the day, notably Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Robyn Denny, Gillian Ayres, Howard Hodgkin and David Hockney. What fewer people know is that Kasmin is also an accomplished photographer, having once worked as an assistant to celebrated portraitist Ida Kar. This remarkable book represents the first time that he has published a collection of his personal photographs. We see Newman, Frankenthaler and others in their studios; we join Hockney as he travels with Kasmin and their shared circle. Each image, whether candid or posed, reveals something new about some of the best known names in postwar art and the world in which they worked.