Chantrell One Million Years BC Reference Photos

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Two 8"x 10" b/w photos from a Soho photo shoot related to the Hammer film "One Million Years BC". Chantrell would frequently stage such shoots to supply himself with reference material for his poster compositions. In the case of Hammer, Chantrell did this more frequently, the reason being that he was often commissioned by Hammer to produce pre-production publicity material (artwork for leaflets, poster designs etc) & therefore the kind of on set publicity photos that were normally provided, simply did not exist.

Marcus Hearn's excellent book, "The Hammer Vault" (2011), presents an early image of a fur (semi) clad woman (pre the casting of Raquel Welch) which was prototype artwork by Chantrell for a Hammer marketing leaflet. Also featured is a publicity shot of Raquel Welch wielding a spear. Though neither image made it to the final quad poster design, various poses were experimented with in this particular photo shoot.

These photos come with written provenance from the Chantrell archive & represent fascinating insights into the care & preparation that Chantrell took in creating his visual images.