'Shy side' of Christine Keeler to be revealed among rare photos in Sotheby's auction

Birth of an icon: the contact sheet featuring Christine Keeler’s famous pose
Lewis Morley
Robert Dex @RobDexES18 February 2020

Rare images of a “frightened and shy” Christine Keeler are expected to sell for thousands of pounds at auction next month.

Keeler, whose affair with Cabinet minister John Profumo shocked the establishment and made her a household name in the Sixties, posed for photographer Lewis Morley at the height of the scandal.

One of the images — showing her sitting backwards on a chair looking directly at the camera — ended up in a newspaper and became one of the defining images of Sixties London.

A contact sheet including that picture and another 10 is going under the hammer at Sotheby’s. They were originally taken in 1963 to promote a film about the scandal, called The Keeler Affair, which was never shown in this country.

Sotheby’s photographs specialist Justine Gruser said the wider selection of pictures showed a “frightened and shy” Keeler, who was just 21 when they were taken, rather than the woman who became a cause célèbre. She said: “We know the one where she is facing forward looking very confident… but in the others she seems a bit more shy and is hiding herself.

“After the affair her life was never the same again and I think this shows that she is not this confident person.”

In the spotlight: Sophie Cookson recreates the iconic photograph in BBC drama The Trial of Christine Keeler

Ms Gruser said she expected interest in the images, which are valued at about £8,000, would be heightened by the success of the recent BBC series, The Trial Of Christine Keeler.

The six-part drama, which starred Sophie Cookson as Keeler and Ben Miles as her politician lover, attracted millions of viewers. She said: “I think it is such an iconic image so people who collect photographs will be interested but I’m sure the TV drama will only help.

“A lot of people are interested in the Sixties and photographers like David Bailey or portraits of Twiggy attract the same kind of collectors, but this is as much a piece of memorabilia as a photograph.

“We have sold the most iconic one a few times in the past and it attracted a lot of interest, but from a different generation. But for younger people when I would talk about Christine Keeler, they would not know much about her… now obviously with the show and everything else there will be more interest.”

The pictures of Keeler astride the chair became so famous that Morley posed several more celebrities, including Sir David Frost and playwright Joe Orton, the same way and eventually gave the chair to the V&A.

The Made In Britain sale, on March 17, also includes work by leading artists David Hockney, Lucian Freud and Bridget Riley as well as Terry O’Neill photographs of David Bowie, Sir Elton John and Kate Moss.

Christine Keeler - In pictures

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