First professional photographs of Kate Moss aged 14 go on show in London
The photographs were the model's first roll of professional film
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Your support makes all the difference.The first modelling photographs of Kate Moss - taken when she was just 14 - have gone on show in London.
The photographs, from 1988, are the first roll of professional film the model sat for.
Click here or on 'view gallery' to see Kate Moss' first professional photos
They show a fresh-faced Moss without any make-up, wearing a white patterned jumper with her hair tied back.
The young Moss was first turned away from her initial shoot, having travelled from Croydon to central London alone.
Photographer David Ross, who rediscovered the pictures seven years ago, explained he had to turn the teenage Moss away because she came unaccompanied to his apartment in Earl’s Court.
He told The Independent: “This very young girl turned up on my doorstep by herself and I said, ‘are you lost?’ I thought her parents must have been in the building somewhere and she didn’t know what flat they were in.”
When she said she had been sent by her agent Sarah Doukas, the photographer realised there had been a mistake.
He told her: “I’m terribly sorry, I can’t photograph you today. I won’t photograph you today because you’re on your own.”
When she came back the next week accompanied by a friend, Ross said he was immediately struck by her raw look.
“The other models at the time were too voluptuous, too broad, too tall and with huge eyes,” he said.
“Kate was just like a little kitten in a way but she had a sharpness to her look. She had sharp and sweet at the same time.”
Although he never took her picture again during her modelling career, Ross remembered being taken aback by the natural ease Moss showed in front of the camera.
“I don’t even think she knew what she was doing. I got the feeling it was effortless for her. As a model you have to know how to turn it on without really turning it on, and that’s what she had and that’s what I saw from the very beginning,” he said.
Ross, who shot the pictures on a Nikon 35mm with Kodak PXP film, said he only realised the photos might be of worth recently, after some persuading from his wife when he rediscovered the shots in an old suitcase of negatives in 2006.
He said looking back he was more concerned about doing a good job for Moss’s agent Sarah Doukas than photographing what turned out to be one of the world’s most famous models.
Kate Moss: Roll 1 is on show at the Lawrence Alkin Gallery, 42 New Compton Street, London; 020 7240 7909.
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