Performing Ghosts - the Film, Theatre & Television Photography of Michael Peto

Lamb Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee

15 June - 10 August 2013

Mon-Fri 09.30-20.30 Sat 09.30-16.30

This exhibition has been created to accompany the Scottish Word & Image Group conference Film Theatre Performance being held at the University on 22-23 June 2013. It features images from the Michael Peto Photographic Collection along with related material held by the University and objects on loan from Summerlee: the Museum of Scottish Industrial Life in North Lanarkshire (CultureNL Ltd).

The University of Dundee Archive Services is the custodian of the entire photographic work – some 130,000 prints and negatives – of the Hungarian-born, British-based photographer, Michael Peto (1908-70).

Largely self-taught, Peto established himself with his coverage of the 1948 London Olympics and joined the staff of The Observer in1949. Over the course of the next two decades Peto cemented his reputation as one of the world’s leading celebrity photographers. His unobtrusive manner and extraordinary ability to capture candid shots earned him the affectionate nickname, ‘The Ghost’.

Aside from his travel photography and studies of important world leaders, Peto is perhaps best known for his photographs of creative artists. This exhibition focuses on Peto’s great interest in the worlds of theatre, film and television and features around 50 photographs of actors, writers and directors in performance and at rest taken between 1956 and 1970.

The exhibition has been curated by Dr Brian Hoyle in association with the University of Dundee Museum Services.

Find out more about the Peto Collection here.

Image: Maggie Smith photographed during the making of the 1967 BBC programme Acting in the ’60s (copyright University of Dundee Archive Services)