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Angus McBean produced self-portrait Christmas cards to send out to friends and family almost every year from 1933 until 1985. The cards document changing contemporary taste and the photographer’s own ageing appearance. They are highly personal, witty and show his endless capacity for technical invention. In his unpublished autobiography Look Back In Angus, McBean writes "I have used almost every known photographic device to bend the intractable medium to my will, and many times it has been multiple exposure". This photograph features three fashion dolls wearing clothes in the style of the legendary French designer Paul Poiret (1879-1944), a McBean figure and two figures of McBean’s partner David Ball. They are all passengers on the S.S. Angus. The striped theme refers to a famous decorative scheme created by McBean for the Marquee room at the Academy Cinema, Oxford Street, in 1954.