Remembering Carlos Clarke 20 years on

Limited edition book commemorates the life and work of legendary photographer Bob

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of influential photographer Bob Carlos Clarke – one of the pioneers of dark and moody mono images that celebrated the underground of alternative culture in the UK.

Shooting editorial and advertising work, including famous portraits of Keith Richards, Rachel Weisz, Marco Pierre White as well as LP covers for The Damned, he was a fine art shooter who was commercially successful. His prints and books continue to sell.

He sadly took his own life aged just 55.

The occasion is marked by The Little Black Gallery and The Estate of Bob Carlos Clarke who today have announced publication of a new book THE LAST DOLLS by Bob Carlos Clarke.

This limited edition book features images from 2002-2005, after the publication of his last book Shooting Sex, from his last exhibition series Love-Dolls Never Die, and other pictures never published before including hand-tinted and hand drawn.

He was described by Terence Pepper, former Curator of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery (UK) as “one of the great photographic image-makers of the last few decades”.

Often referred to as Britain’s answer to Helmut Newton, Bob Carlos Clarke was born in Cork, Ireland in 1950. His photographic approach is best known for his carefully composed and highly constructed photographs, where glamour and provocation rub shoulders. His visual interests – women and rubber, in particular – sealed his reputation as a photographer of erotic black and white images.

From celebrity portraiture to photojournalism and advertising photography, his work covers almost every sphere of photography, often pushing the boundaries of art and acceptability.

Bob Carlos Clarke produced six books: The Illustrated Delta of Venus (1979), Obsession (1981), The Dark Summer (1985), White Heat (1990), Shooting Sex (2002), and Love Dolls Never Die (2004). A 25th anniversary edition of White Heat (Octopus) was published in 2015. Since his death the Estate of Bob Carlos Clarke & The Little Black Gallery have published two books: The Agony and The Ecstasy (Jane & Jeremy, 2018), and STUDIO (The Little Black Gallery, 2020). The Last Dolls (2026) is the third book. A biography Exposure: The Unusual Life and Violent Death of Bob Carlos Clarke by Sunday Times bestselling author Simon Garfield was published by Ebury Press in 2009.

Bob’s works are highly collectible and have been acquired by national art galleries including the National Portrait Gallery (UK), National Media Museum for the National Photography Collection (UK), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum (USA), and Crawford Art Gallery (Ireland); as well as private collections including the Michael Wilson Centre of Photography and the Elton John Photography Collection.

During his lifetime he worked with Hamiltons Gallery in London. In 2004 Eyestorm presented ‘Love-Dolls Never Die’ – his first series of works printed as giclee prints. Since his death his Estate has been managed by The Little Black Gallery. The most recent exhibitions were in 2023 at Saint Laurent in Paris and Los Angeles, curated by Anthony Vaccarello.

The foreword is by Philippe Garner, who wrote:

Bob Carlos Clarke was a friend. We first met in the late Seventies, when he was establishing his reputation as a photographer. I got to know him well over the subsequent years. But perhaps I should qualify this by acknowledging that, while I greatly valued and enjoyed his dynamism and single-mindedness, and we found much common ground in our fascination with the magic and mystery of photographs, Bob remained in many ways unfathomable. I recall fondly and with respect his intensity, his dark humour, and his overriding commitment to his picture-making. And, of course, his pictures become key to our understanding of their creator. Bob’s work made public his private, often perverse world of the imagination.

The title of the first anthology of Bob’s haunting pictures, published in 1981, was Obsession. The word defined the man, whose principal, and indeed relentless focus as a photographer was on the highly stylised imagery of desire, ever inflected with reference to its darker facets. Bob’s world was dominated by pagan goddesses, his fetishised Venuses. It was a world of pictorial allegories finely balanced between sensual provocation and sinister foreboding. Bob cast himself within this domain in a Mephistophelean role when, in 1985, he created a self-portrait with Devil’s horns. He was consumed by the tensions that were fundamental to his character and to the challenging imagery that he was destined and determined to create. How apt and unforgettable that his funeral chapel should reverberate to the sound of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ by The Rolling Stones.

Bob’s sensibility and spirit were well characterised in a gift that he generously made to me. I had admired in his studio the sleek, austere beauty of a high-gloss black motorcycle helmet. Some days later, a box arrived at my office. In it was the helmet, or its twin, accompanied by a postcard of one of Bob’s images that bore the inscription in his distinctive bold hand, ‘Too Fast to Live, too Young to Die’, embellished with a skull and crossbones. He was teasing me, for he knew me as risk-averse, but unwittingly and poignantly, he was drafting his own epitaph.

In 1995 I made a portrait of Bob in his meticulously appointed darkroom. Bob looks directly at my lens. Revisiting this picture, I sense the deep wells of torment and ultimately despair that were to bring his life to its tragic close. Bob’s trajectory was that of a shooting star that shone brightly but all too briefly in the firmament of images that was his world and that became his legacy.
This publication, presenting a selection of works from his last few years, marks the twentieth anniversary of Bob’s death. All credit to his widow Lindsey, their daughter Scarlett, and his agent, and sustained champion Ghislain Pascal for their commitment to the preservation of his work and the cherishing of his memory.

Brandei Estes, Senior Curator Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, and former Head of Photographs at Sotheby’s, wrote:

When I first encountered the photographs of women by Bob Carlos Clarke, I was struck by a deep tension. The images were provocative and, at times, unsettling – but the women portrayed appeared powerful, composed, and in full command of their agency. This paradox – between discomfort and admiration – prompted reflection. Yes, there are unmistakable elements of fetishism and eroticism, but also an assertive, self-possessed femininity that resists being objectified. These aren’t invitations to gaze, but rather declarations: “look, but you cannot touch.”

Carlos Clarke is often compared to Helmut Newton, dubbed the “British Helmut Newton,” but the comparison only goes so far. Carlos Clarke’s work carries a sharper psychological edge, more cerebral in its exploration of desire and control. As Philippe Garner once insightfully observed, “Is he photographing what he desires or photographing what he fears? I suspect the answer is both. The power of sexuality is terrifying and photographing it is a way of subjugating it.” Carlos Clarke’s originality lies in this ambiguity – his ability to render sexuality as both alluring and disquieting, beauty as both commanding and unknowable.

Central to this was Carlos Clarke’s process. According to his long-time agent Ghislain Pascal, Carlos Clarke selected his models carefully, often working outside agency norms, developing long-term collaborations that sometimes spanned years. These were not commissioned images; they were personal, meticulously crafted projects. Carlos Clarke was known for his professionalism – respecting, compensating, and clearly communicating with his models. What emerged were not passive portraits but collaborative performances, making his photographs as much about the subject’s agency as his own.

There’s a psychological intensity to Carlos Clarke’s work that feels inseparable from his personal struggles. Known to wrestle with depression, he was a relentless overthinker – his mind always working, always pushing. His photographs are never casual. They are deliberate constructions, often charged with a sense of emotional turbulence just beneath their polished surfaces. His 2006 suicide left many questions unanswered, but the work speaks volumes about an artist trying to resolve, or at least confront, the forces within him.

This complexity is on full display in The Last Dolls, a new publication marking the twentieth anniversary of his death. Drawing from his private archive, it includes iconic images from his final series, Love-Dolls Never Die. These photographs feel stark, cool, and unsettling – clinical in their precision. They stand in contrast to earlier, more sensual images where his muses move freely, caught in moments of spontaneity. In some, Carlos Clarke has drawn or painted directly onto the prints, reworking them and making each piece unique – subverting photography’s reproducibility and asserting his authorship twice over.
Seeing these images in person offers a rare glimpse into Carlos Clarke’s singular vision. For those fortunate enough to acquire one of these works, it is more than ownership; it is a connection to a fiercely original artist whose work remains as provocative and compelling today as ever.

Costing $70 or roughly £60, the book has 60 pages and is limited to 300 copies. The Last Dolls by Bob Carlos Clarke is available from thelittleblackgallery.com