Jim Moran Lives On!

I’ve just been sent a copy of the free Belfast cultural paper, The Vacuum, which features an article on the great Jim Moran, citing The Fame Formula as the major reference. It’s good to see that, in the wake of the book’s publication, the word about some of the lost greats of the publicity world is spreading.

Only nine years ago, Moran’s death was passed over unremarked in the British press; such people didn’t matter much outside America, it was presumed. But the major publicist-generated story of the day was the manufactured affair between Chris Evans and Geri Halliwell – proof, if proof were needed, that the art of the stuntster was alive and well in Britain and that the influence of Moran and his fellow stunsters, who created the Hollywood publicity industry, lived on, even if their names had vanished.

It’s very good, then, to see this article commemorating Moran’s inventive and eclectic life, which is part of the promotion for an exhibition organized by the Factotum arts project at Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery at 23 Donegall Street, Belfast. The exhibition, A Century of Spin, “explores the genre of publicity photography, its function and tradition. Although rarely exhibited in a gallery context, this form of photography is pervasive and plays a significant role in the way that we understand our contemporary world from politics and news media to advertising and tourism. The exhibition includes photographs and printed ephemera from different periods in the 20th century and draws material from a range of image collections in Northern Ireland, the UK and US.”

To find out more about A Century of Spin, click here.