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My remarkable mother
Tomorrow, an exhibition on the work of the pioneering photographer and lifelong communist Helen Muspratt opens at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, coinciding with the publication of a book about her. Helen’s daughter Jessica Sutcliffe introduces her life, work and politics

Born in 1907, the daughter of an officer serving in the Indian army, my mother spent her first seven years in India.

After the first world war the family returned to England and settled in Swanage, Dorset. It was here at the age of 20 that she set up her first studio, having studied photography at the Regent Street Polytechnic.

In 1932 she met Lettice Ramsey, the widow of the brilliant Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Frank Ramsey, and the pair soon decided to set up a second studio in Cambridge.

  • The exhibition Helen Muspratt: Photographer runs in the De’Longhi Print Room at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, from March 9-May 8, details: pallant.org.uk. Face: Shape and Angle by Jessica Sutcliffe is published by Manchester University Press and can be bought through the Pallant Bookshop, price £30, pallantbookshop.com
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