Shooting fashion in London and Paris and portraits of pop stars such as Faithfull, Black and The Rolling Stones, Falloon helped forge the bold aesthetic of the era. But in 1968, he abruptly left London to work as a reportage photographer in Canada. His Times obituary ascribed the move to the fact that Falloon could no longer hide his homosexuality – something that still had stigma attached to it at this time, only a year after its decriminalisation – and this is a view endorsed to some extent by Colin Corbett, the man who would become Falloon’s partner on his return to London in the 1970s. “Yes, that could be true,” Corbett agrees, although the Falloon that Corbett knew and lived with was entirely at ease with his sexuality – and also not in the least bit regretful of his former glories.
For on his return to Britain, the photographic style had moved on, as had the mood. “It simply wasn’t fun any more,” was what Falloon told me. Instead, he used his artistic talents to become an artists’ agent, famously working with Karl Stoecker on early album covers for Roxy Music and Lou Reed, before becoming a fine art dealer, selling art deco silver at Grays Antiques, near Bond Street. He very much enjoyed his life, says Corbett, and that heady moment in the 1960s was simply a fund of great stories, until he was persuaded to open the boxes of negatives, prints and contacts stored under his bed for decades. The couple travelled extensively – often returning to India, where Corbett would eventually place Falloon’s ashes in the family plot in one of Calcutta’s vast, Raj-era cemeteries.
Perhaps Ron’s diffident, unassuming character – as well as that sudden exit from the London scene – contributed to his relative obscurity, compared with contemporaries such as Bailey and Donovan. Or as Garner puts it, “Falloon had an eye. He was young and curious, and he made some terrific pictures of a particular moment – pictures that capture the spirit of the mid-Sixties.” But Bailey and Donovan “had a particular quality of tenacity. Maybe he didn’t have that. You had to keep fighting and pushing, because this has always been an industry that uses people and discards them.”
But nonetheless the quality of Falloon’s pictures speaks for itself. There is no digital manipulation here. He was a master of composition and of light, capturing the essence of the moment and the period.
Ronald Falloon’s photographs will be on display at 54 Shepherd Market, London W1J 7QX from 19–25 April 2021. For more information visit theartofspeed.co.uk
This article was taken from the Spring 2021 edition of the Goodwood Magazine.