Tennis Player Scratching Her Brum

I was watching a documentary on BBC Two fronted by Sue Perkins last night — what would the world of semi-serious middlebrow TV have done if she’d stayed working with Mel? — focusing on popular art. You know the sort of stuff that is popular rather than art for the most part. It covered the Green Lady, the airbrush-noir of Jack Vettriano, that sort of thing.

It eventually got to poster art and the most famous arse of the seventies (and no, not Malcolm McClaren):

The Tennis Girl - the most published photograph in the world. Photographer and copyright holder Martin Elliott. The Tennis Girl Poster

Photographer Martin Elliott was interviewed and I could detect a hint of Brum in his accent — some research later and we find that the photo was taken on Birmingham University’s tennis courts. Fiona Butler the model was from Stourport — but I think it’s a shot we can claim.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 10:14 am by Jon Bounds and is filed under art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  • skinheadmoonstomp
    I was led to believe this was shot at the tally ho in Edgbaston!I may be mistaken but didnt someone try to persuade the original model to doa reshoot about ten years ago. Its a great pic thats for sure.

    Keep Right On!
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  1. Birmingham: It's Not Shit loves Birmingham, its people, arts, animals, buildings, parks, grass verges, factories and bus stops. We've even got a soft spot for the Black Country.

    B:iNS runs The Brummie of the Year Award, Talk Like a Brummie Day and organises odd stuff like spending all day on the eleven bus.

    BiNS is mostly by Jon Bounds, a Birmingham based social web consultant, producer and writer. You can hire him to work on your stuff, or follow him on twitter. There's also stuff from Danny Smith and Karen Strunks.

    Feel free to send us anything you're interested in - or think we might be.
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