The Shaw Thing
To take up some of the points raised in the comments on my post of Anne Scott. This will undoubtedly repeat some of the reflections I posed in my old blog on the Scottish Spick and Span photographer Shaw, who was responsible for the major output from north of the border in the early to mid 1960s and not J B Fullarton with whom he was generally mistaken. Of course, there is hardly anything to go on as to who he was, unlike Fullarton where there is evidence of his operation in Saltcoats, Ayrshire and where he is credited with pictures of Janet Neill in magazines like Carnival of the 1950s. The only thing we can ascertain is that he shot from his house in Bearsden, a suburb of Glasgow, and that he appeared to have access to the Bearsden tennis club when it was closed, with the likes of the Kent sisters and Louise Crawford being photographed there both inside and out. Bearsden was not only one of the wealthiest ‘burbs in Scotland but the whole of the UK. And Shaw had a detached home. My assumption was he was retired, obviously not short of a bob or two and probably a well-known man about town. Where he did find his models we can only guess. The earliest ones were I seem to have researched were the Catherines Brydon and Small, followed by Ann Grainger and Annette French. I am also of the opinion he was an amateur and therefore maybe a member of a camera club where local models were hired. Once he got established he might have placed ads in local newspapers or, who knows, in the window of appropriate Glasgow newsagents. From my own experience, networking would have played a part. So Annette French may well have introduced Jane Rennie, who introduced Ann Grainger, who brought in Cherie Scott, or a different permutation of all four. A handsome payday was almost certainly in store. Likewise, it could be argued Ruth Cavendish was recommended by Anne Scott and she in turn suggested Helen Milligan. The incomparable Jane Paul, presented here in unusually smiley mood before returning to her more common grump, seemed to have no link with any of the other lassies. She was part of the later Shaw intake and who knows how she entered his orbit. What we do know about Shaw, however, through prints that came into circulation, was that his boundaries exceeded that which Town and Country published at the time, dating right from the early days with topless pictures of Jane Rennie and her chum Lesley (I forget her surname). That continued throughout his tenure (Anne Scott and Ruth Cavendish for two also seemed content to let their guard down). In addition, Cherry Lennox was photographed in a room in which a small cine camera was perched on a stand. It is possible he was looking for that little bit extra from his models than required by R T Staples for publication. If so, could he have over-stepped the mark on more than one occasion, which is why there might have seemed to be quite a throughput of his girls? The business has a tendency to attract a certain type with whom an aspiring glamour girl may not feel entirely safe. Our friend Phil “Fiona Cooper” Sutcliffe, for example, is at the worst end of this spectrum, eventually spending not one but two stretches at His Majesty’s Pleasure for the most appalling transgressions. He is not the only one. Shaw’s pictures don’t betray any discomfort on the part of those Spick and Span superstars. But I recently did another shoot with one girl I’ve known for seven years and another for ten. Shaw’s girls lasted barely seven or ten months.