SHOOTING STARS
Carinthia West - Right Place At The Right Time
Rolling Stone’s band member Ron Wood was notorious for his Malibu parties. In 1976, during one of his all-nighters, his wife Krissy went into labor, and it was a friend and photographer Carinthia West who captured the behind-the-scenes story. The series of shots, titled the Long Night, documents the evening which involved a last-minute dash to the hospital in Neil Young’s hearse. The personal photos show expectant father Ron and bandmate Mick Jagger waiting in the hospital for the arrival of Wood’s first child.
Back in the 70s, Ms. West was a British model and “It Girl” and was rarely without a camera. She hung out with friends, including the Stones, the Beatles guitarist George Harrison, and actors Eric Idle, Helen Mirren, Shelly Duvall, and Anjelica Huston. She was the only child of General Sir Michael West, NATO’s UK representative in Washington DC. The young West had access to events at the British Embassy and the Kennedy White House, “being around famous artists and performers was something that was just normal for me,” said Ms. West.
Shooting Stars: Carinthia West, Britain and America in the 1970s is the artist’s most extensive exhibition held in the UK. The collection features never before seen photos, including a portrait of The Shining actor Shelley Duvall taken on Robert Altman’s film 3 Women. “All the photographs in this exhibition were based on trust, friendship and respect; we were just having fun together and I happened to have my camera,” said Ms. West.
Her images not only reveal the personal side of her famous friends, but the 63 shots on view also document an era. “I wanted to showcase some of Carinthia’s best images, ones which show her talent at creating seemingly effortless yet highly evocative compositions which also say something about the relationship between Britain and America in the 1970s and about this much-maligned decade as a whole,” said Steven Parissien, Curator and Cultural Historian at Oxford University.
The show also includes images from a 1976 shoot for Pink Floyd’s album cover Animals. Ms. West photographed the iconic inflatable pig floating above Battersea Power Station in London. Those images are now included in the band’s current touring exhibition, Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains.
“Carinthia’s photographs lift the curtain on an upbeat and buoyant view of the 1970s,” said Parissien. “We hope this cheerful, carefree, and colorful show will help lift the public’s spirits after the grey and dismal period of lockdown. And will make them think again about the 1970s.”
Shooting Stars: Carinthia West, Britain and America in the 1970s is on view at the American Museum & Gardens in Bath, England, through October 2021.
