TWIGGY and Mick Jagger are to put in an appearance at a North-East gallery as part of a star-studded exhibition.

Tony Blair and John Gielgud will also be featuring in the exhibition called A History of Portrait Photography, which opens at the Durham Light Infantry Museum and Durham Art Gallery, next Saturday.

The display will trace the development of portrait photography over the past 150 years.

The portraits have been selected from the collections of the Julia Margaret Cameron (JMC) Trust at Dimbola Lodge, on the Isle of Wight, which was Mrs Cameron's former home.

Included are 19th Century prints, as well as images from the early part of the 20th Century, such as those by Cecil Beaton and Dorothy Wilding.

Portraits by contemporary photographers such as Linda McCartney, Lord Lichfield and Lord Snowdon are also represented.

The exhibition concludes with the latest digital imaging by John Henshall and Candice Farmer, who is tipped for future fame.

JMC curator, Brian Hinton said: "Perhaps some aboriginal tribes are correct in thinking that each time one's portrait is taken, a little piece of one's soul disappears.

"What will viewers of a later millennium think of what appears here? What will they see that is present beyond our eyes.''

The exhibition will run until April 18.

Published: 06/03/2004