Carla Borel
French-born British photographer
Carla Borel (born 1973) is a French-British photographer. She has made portraits and black and white street photographs in Soho, London.
Biography
Borel was born in Paris and raised in Southwick, Hampshire and Las Vegas. Her mother was a Las Vegas showgirl and appeared in Diamonds Are Forever. Her father worked at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, and encouraged her to keep a diary. Borel first worked in London as a croupier in casinos when she began recording the people around her with a Pentax SLR camera.
She was working as bartender at The French House in Soho when she started documenting Soho life with her camera and also organising artists' projects there. These included exhibitions with Paul Gorman, Neal Fox of Le Gun, and the first series of John Claridge's Soho Faces, the photography sessions for which Borel organised and were held in an upstairs room at The French House.
Work
Borel shot her Stillsoho series using black and white film over a 15-year period. The portraits depicted artists, writers, flâneurs, friends and lovers and the people and landscape of a disappearing London, such as The Colony Room Club and its members.
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