APL Vintage Photography Collection:

APL was established by fashion photographer John Adams in the 1960s. Nowadays, APL is best known for wide-ranging contemporary digital photographs. But the photography of the early years has far from been forgotten…

It all began when John Adams abandoned his singing career in favour of photography. He set up a studio and later, in Carnaby Street, had his own model agency – Adams Models. He photographed all the famous groups of the time, including the Stones and the Beatles. Sadly, all of John Adams' black-and-white photographs were destroyed by a flood in the basement of his offices in the early 1970s. The only images left behind were some colour transparencies, which had been stored in a separate part of the studio. However, this mishap did not deter Adams from pursuing his photography.

In 1974, Adams Picture Library (APL) was established. It was run by John’s wife, Carol Adams, and was started with John’s stock of pictures. Over time the business was expanded to include the work of many other photographers. Tragically, John Adams passed away in 1991, at only 58 years of age. For a number of years after John Adams died, Carol Adams continued to run APL and to employ new photographic talent.

In 2002, the company was taken over by new managment and energies were focused on digitising the collection. However, the huge archive of photography spanning a 40-year time period still remains - most notably, a specialist collection of Vintage fashion photography (from the 1960s and 1970s). Some of the most visually striking images of the whole collection are the pictures taken by Adams himself.

Click here to view the APL vintage collection

The photographs in this vintage collection are available either Royalty Free or Rights Managed. Model releases for all of John Adams’ images are held here in the APL offices. For more information on buying images Rights Managed please contact us. To see further images from the in-house vintage collection please contact us. Or for Royalty Free purchases – just click on your desired images to display image pricing information.