Christine Keeler, 1963
Silver print
53 by 45.5cm.; 20⅞by 17 7/8in.
Private collection
At the height of the Profumo affair in 1963, Keeler sat for a photographic portrait (Above) taken by Lewis Morley. The photo shoot, at a studio on the first floor of Peter Cook’s Establishment Club, with Morley was to promote a proposed film, The Keeler Affair, that was never released in the United Kingdom. Keeler was reluctant to pose in the nude, but the film producers insisted. Morley persuaded Keeler to sit astride a plywood chair, so that whilst technically she would be nude, the back of the chair would obscure most of her body. Keeler told cartoon historian Tim Benson in 2007 that she was not nude and was, in fact, wearing “knickers” during the entire photoshoot…
Zaidan Gallery 