Would you like ‘a framed 16 x 20 inch nude portrait’ of yourself? The picture would be ‘in black and white or tinted blue’ and would be taken ‘in the privacy of your own home (with a chaperone in attendance)’ by a photographer who would bring a ‘portable studio’ with him. One of his nude portraits would make, according to the advertisement he placed in my local north London newspaper, ‘a gift that is really special and personal’.
My curiosity was piqued by the man offering this service, who rejoices in the name of Jack Lamport-Mitchell. But my wife said she on no account wanted to receive a gift consisting of a nude portrait of herself. She thought the whole idea sounded unbearably tacky, a mere excuse to get women to take their clothes off, and could not be written about without publicising someone who did not deserve any kind of encouragement. This was even before the trial ended of the abominable man in Essex who murdered his niece, after 20 years of preying on young girls on the pretext of taking photographs of them which would launch them as models.
But I rang Mr Lamport-Mitchell, enjoyed the chirpy way he talked, and arranged to meet him in a cafe just off the North Circular Road. He is 65 and has only taken photographs of six naked women so far, so he is the antithesis of the kind of people who get written about because they are successful. His mother died when he was nine, and his father, whom he describes as ‘a ne’er-do-well’ and ‘a compulsive gambler’, soon afterwards deserted him and went off to South Africa with another woman. In tribute to his mother, ‘a good person who died young’, Jack gave himself a ‘name extension’ and added her maiden name of Lamport to his surname of Mitchell.
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