Michael Joseph (1941-) - Fag break between takes, pool ladies series, a unique two-toned unique darkroom print

Fag break - pool ladies between takes - an original Photograph by Michael Joseph

Photo taken in the 1980s
Vintage colour print of a darkroom photo having had hand-applied two-tone toning
Mounted – mount size: 50 cm wide × 40 cm tall
Unframed
One-off vintage print

Signed: in pen by the artist on the mount
Captioned: period studio notation to mount

This compelling and enigmatic photograph presents a row of figures aligned with near-scientific precision beneath stark numerical markers. The repetition of the human form, the disciplined symmetry, and the unresolved tension between individuality and uniformity give the image a quietly hypnotic power. The subjects appear held between display and examination — at once athletic, anonymous, vulnerable, and monumental. Joseph draws the viewer into a suspended psychological space where performance, symmetry, and exposure intersect.

What makes this print particularly rare is Michael Joseph’s intentional two-tone darkroom treatment: the upper register glows with a warm, earthen sepia, while the lower half falls into a cool blue-toned shadow. This subtle but masterful tonal divide deepens the conceptual tension of the piece — flesh and earth above, reflection and abstraction below — reinforcing a visual dialogue between presence and echo, body and mirror, reality and inversion. This was not a commercial technique but an experimental darkroom intervention by the artist himself.

In striking contrast to the theatrical abundance and convivial energy of Joseph’s celebrated 1968 Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet series — where bodies gather, feast, and collide — this photograph is clinical, ordered, and quietly unsettling. Where The Banquet revels in excess, warmth, and interaction, this work is about restraint, rhythm, and controlled revelation. It diverges again from the soft intimacy visible elsewhere in Joseph’s archive, revealing instead a cooler, more conceptual gaze. Seen together, these divergent modes illuminate the full breadth of his artistic vocabulary.

The tonal control here is especially striking: deep, velvety browns balance against pale architectural surfaces, while finely graded mid-tones sculpt muscle, shadow, and spatial depth. The dual brown-and-blue toning bears all the characteristics of a true darkroom experiment — tactile, dimensional, and impossible to replicate digitally.

Michael Joseph was a prolific British photographer active primarily in the latter half of the 20th century, renowned for his influential advertising and editorial work of the 1960s, including the legendary Beggars Banquet Rolling Stones session. His wider practice spanned intimate portraiture, performative tableaux, and observational studies of people in constructed and social spaces. Much of his strongest work survives only as unique darkroom prints, making vintage examples of this kind especially scarce.

This is an authentic one-off vintage print from the original period. It has been recently unmounted and remounted; natural imperfections from age and handling are shown clearly in the photographs. It is a distinctive, unconventional work from the photographer’s own library, with aparticularly surreal sense of humour - several ladies standing nude while one smokes her cigarette - and is offered to find a home with a collector who values its rarity and character.

The photograph will be packed with archival materials and dispatched with great care — from one devoted steward of historic photography to another. These works are not merely images; they carry time, authorship, and the irreplaceable presence of darkroom craft.

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