This week we were delighted to receive a great new addition to our Lindsay Anderson Archive in the form of a set of black and white photographic portraits of the director. These images, taken by a number of different photographers, were mostly taken in the 1980s – a period when Anderson found it increasingly difficult to make films following the poor critical and commercial response to his 1982 film Britannia Hospital. The archive includes a fascinating series of files relating to Anderson’s unmade films detailing the unsuccessful efforts made to produce a range of projects.
The archive contains a huge photographic record of Anderson’s life and career with thousands of photographs documenting everything from his childhood in India to detailed records of the making of his films – a selection of Anderson’s photograph albums from the 1950s can be seen on our flickr site. This week’s donation further enhances this comprehensive collection with a selection of new and previously unseen portraits of Anderson.
Many of the photographs were taken in Anderson’s London home, the setting for his final film Is That All There Is?, an autobiographical documentary made in 1992. As well as the black and white portraits the new material we have received also includes a set of colour photographs of the contents of Anderson’s flat. Both documentary and photographs provide fascinating background information for the archivist as they show material from Anderson’s archive in its original context. The cameras record the cinema posters on the walls, the books and video tapes on the shelves and the correspondence in the filing cabinets in Anderson’s office – material which is now held in our new archives store.
