Yahoo Finance Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke’s widow on why it’s time to sell the archive studio filled with his life’s work
Fantasy land: Lindsey Carlos Clarke bought the artist’s studio in Pomona House a year after her husband died.
(Savills)Anyone who considered themselves "too rich, too famous or too fat" to attend a public gallery would be able to view and buy work by renowned photographer Bob Carlos Clarke at a private artist’s studio in Fulham, around the corner from The Little Black Gallery where his widow, Lindsey, exhibited and sold his photos alongside Tamara Beckwith and Ghislain Pascal.
She has now put the studio on the market to fund a permanent foundation in memory of her husband, who died in 2006.
Cited as "one of the great photographic image-makers of the last few decades", Carlos Clarke photographed stars from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to Elle Macpherson and Rachel Weisz. He also took the photographs for Marco Pierre White’s cookbook White Heat, which cemented his reputation as the first celebrity chef.
"When Bob died, I inherited a huge archive of photos  vast  and I wondered what to do with it. For years Bob and I had driven past this building and looked at it and thought, ‘Isn’t it odd that one of these studios never comes up?’ Then, one day in 2007, I was driving past and saw a for sale sign. I bought the studio with the idea to store the photo archive there," says Lindsey.
The studio is one of six in Pomona House, a Victorian building that once housed the Martin Brothers’ pottery. It has an open living space and a mezzanine bedroom.
"You’re really buying in to something special. The idea of an artist’s studio is sort of sexy, it’s a fantasy. All the people in the building are connected to the arts in some way. Apparently Aubrey Beardsley had a wash in my studio but I wasn’t there so I can’t vouch for that."
Her daughter, Scarlett Carlos Clarke, lived in the studio with her now-husband, fellow artist Tim Noble, but Lindsey remains tight-lipped about any contemporary big names who have visited.
However, she does recall hosting an array of starry guests at their home nearby in Fulham.
"Pete Townshend had a habit of turning up on our doorstep at 11 o’clock at night, which was a little bit of a shock," she says.
"One night we were just about to go to bed in your normal, middle-class way and then Pete Townshend arrives with two of the Sex Pistols. We had to be cool while thinking, ‘Oh my God is this happening?’ I had lots of those moments with Bob."
Another afternoon, after a night spent waiting to meet Keith Richards at the Savoy, a commotion downstairs alerted the sleeping couple to the fact that Stash Klossowski, who was staying with them, had let himself in to the house, accompanied by Richards wearing a "great big hat and Yohji Yamamoto robe" and ready for his close-up right there and then.
The studio is on the market with Savills for £865,000 and Lindsey is planning what to do next with the archive. "I’m terribly sad to let the studio go but it’s time to do something positive with Bob’s work."
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