John Deakin (12 May 1912- 25 May 1972) was an accomplished portrait, fashion and street photographer. His style, especially in portraiture, is characterized by a blunt immediacy which is often amplified by tight cropping and extreme tonal contrasts. Since Deakin revealed little information on his upbringing and background, not much is known about his early years. Around 1930, he briefly worked as a window dresser in Dublin and spent the late 1930s travelling Italy, Mexico, the USA and Tahiti with his partner, the art collector and patron, Arthur Jeffress. In 1938, Deakin exhibited some paintings to critical acclaim at the Mayor Gallery, London, only taking up the camera a year later on a trip to Paris. He learned how to master it quickly and covered the war in Malta and East and North Africa from 1940 until the end of WWII, for the British Army Film and Photographic Unit.[2]

Deakin and Bacon met in London shortly after the end of the war, where they both socialized in the same bohemian Soho circles.[3] Deakin’s gritty portraits of fellow artists and intellectuals, such as Oliver Bernard, J.P. Donleavy and Frank Auerbach, epitomize the maverick spirit of the time and are today among his most acclaimed photographs.

Deakin worked for a variety of magazines including Liliput and Picture Post, and between 1947 and 1954, was famously hired and fired twice by Vogue for his erratic professional behavior and repeated loss of equipment.[4] His portrait of a bare-chested Bacon between two carcasses of meat from 1952, which was published in Vogue in 1962, not only became one of the most iconic images of the artist, but moreover, was used by the artist as a pictorial springboard for his painting Figure with Meat, in 1954.[5]