To mark the 20th anniversary since the death of Bob Carlos Clarke, The Little Black Gallery & The Estate of Bob Carlos Clarke have published a new book The Last Dolls by Bob Carlos Clarke. Many of the artworks are now available for the first time online.
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.
The foreword is by Philippe Garner, and the afterword by Brandei Estes, Senior Curator of Photographs at National Portrait Gallery, and former Head of Photographs at Sotheby’s.
Foreword by Philippe Garner
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.
Philippe Garner
London, January 2026
Bob Carlos Clarke (1950-2006)
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 Last Dolls by Bob Carlos Clarke and artworks from the book are available from thelittleblackgallery.com
Bob Carlos Clarke : The Last Dolls
Published by The Little Black Gallery
Edited by Ghislain Pascal
Text by Philippe Garner and Brandei Estes
Designed by Studio Kunze
25cm x 20cm
60 pages
29 images
Foiled hardcover
Edition of 300
Printed on Uncoated and Coated FSC, chlorine & acid free paper in the UK
Price $70
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