A photographic exhibition called The Last Dolls is set to open in London next month to celebrate the work of legendary erotic photographer Bob Carlos Clarke. The show, to be held at The Atlas Gallery, will be the first solo exhibition of his work in the capital for ten years, and marks twenty years since his death on 25th March 2006. Held in conjunction with The Little Black Gallery, the exhibition, which runs from 5th-26th September, promises the chance to see some of Bob’s best known images as well as some that have rarely seen before.
A number of photographs come from his Love Dolls Never Die series, while others in the show are parts of projects such as The Dark Summer and Shooting Sex, accompanied by some standalone work including artist’s proofs and signed prints. An especially interesting piece is a collage of test prints that Bob put together himself comprising images made for and around his Shooting Sex project. It shows some work that made it into the series, along with experiments and ideas formed during the development of the project.
Bob worked almost exclusively in black and white, and shot all his photographs using film. As well as being a revolutionary photographer who led the erotic, fetish and glamour art scene during the 80s and 90s, Bob was a highly skilled printer and took great pride in printing, and reprinting, all his own art prints in the darkroom he designed and built in his London studio.
While some of the prints on show are from numbered editions, others are one-off and unique prints. Bob’s former wife Lindsey told me in an interview at the beginning of this year, that very often editions of prints didn’t get finished as Bob wasn’t interested in reprinting work he’d already got right. ‘Bob made a decision at one stage that he was going to do editions of 20,’ Lindsey told me. ‘But he never did editions of 20 because he got bored after he’d printed four of them. He’d be like, “I’m not printing any more of these.” So there was never an edition of 20 because he never printed them. So when people say, oh, there’s 20, you feel like saying, good luck with that. If there’s four or three, you’re bloody lucky. He found it boring, you know. He’d done it once, he wasn’t going to do any more.’ Consequently Bob’s prints limited editions prints are often even more limited than they might seem.
Bob’s work was highly influential and his six books each created quite a stir when they appeared between 1979 and 2004. His dramatic pictures illustrating Marco Pierre-White’s White Heat cookery book brought him fame beyond the art world, while work for magazine’s such as Loaded and pieces acquired by the National Portrait Gallery also broadened his audience.
The exhibition The Last Of The Dolls will be held at The Atlas Gallery, 49 Dorset Street, London W1U 7NF between 5-26th September 2026. For more information see The Atlas Gallery website and The Little Black Gallery which represents Bob’s work.
