Works by Ida Kar are rare as her negatives and prints were acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London and few of her works come onto the art market. 

The present work and the annotations on the reverse provide a glimpse of her important retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1960. This was an important moment in the history of British photography as it marked the very first time a leading public gallery had staged a solo exhibition of a living photographer. There had been small shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art but this exhibition at the Whitechapel was regarded as an important statement about the status of photography and led to much discussion of whether photography should be considered art. For the exhibition Kar massively enlarged her work. An installation view taken by Kar, herself, shows that an enlarged print of African Dancer was the centre piece of one wall, a reflection of its importance to Kar, and an inscription by Kar on the reverse of the present work records the dimensions of the exhibited print. 

For more information about the Whitechapel exhibition see the website of the National Portrait Gallery here