THE School of Art at Aberystwyth University has acquired a collection of vintage prints by one of the most significant British photographers of the 20th century.

Born in south Wales in 1904, Angus McBean photographed some of the most iconic stars of the stage and screen between the 1930s and ’80s. Audrey Hepburn, Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Williams are just some of the big names who came to the studios he set up in Belgrave Road and Covent Garden, London.

One of his most recognised photographs shows the four Beatles leaning over a concrete balcony for the cover of their Please Please Me album.

The originals of The Beatles’ album covers are in the National Portrait Gallery in London, but other McBean photographs of famous performers such as Cliff Richard and the Beverley Sisters were also used for their album covers and are now part of the Aberystwyth collection.

In addition to his more conventional studio portraits McBean, a pioneer of photo-surrealism, would playfully arrange his subjects in dream-like sets that he constructed in his studio.

In one of the black and white photographs in Aberystwyth University’s School of Art Collection, Audrey Hepburn’s head and shoulders emerge from a desert landscape dwarfing three Roman columns.

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