Unseen photo of Fonda as Barbarella goes on show

A previously unseen photo of Jane Fonda (above) in one of her most famous roles, the free-loving spacegirl Barbarella, is to go on display in London for the first time.

Fonda played the eponymous heroine, a 41st-century astronaut with a penchant for PVC outfits, thigh-high boots and a Brigitte Bardot bouffant, in the 1968 film by her then-husband Roger Vadim. The cult film was based on a comic-strip by French sci-fi writer Jean-Claude Forest.

Vadim, who launched his first wife Bardot to global stardom with his debut film And God Created Woman in 1956, recognised Barbarella was a homage to his ex-wife but cast his new love Fonda in the lead role.

In Barbarella, Fonda travels to the planet Lythion on a mission to save the earth from the evil scientist Durand Durand. Along the way she encounters a group of women who procure the 'Essence of Man' by smoking their male victim through a giant hookah pipe, seduces a blind angel and survives a torture machine that kills by dispensing lethal doses of sexual pleasure.

The black and white image of Fonda as Barbarella by photographer Paul Joyce is to go on display this month as part of the inaugural 'Photo@Olympia' section of the international art and antiques fair at London's Olympia, along with photos by landscape photographer Ansel Adams and celebrity snapper Terry O'Neill. Other works on show by Joyce will include portraits of the playwright Samuel Beckett and film director Ken Russell. Photo@Olympia runs from June 5 to 14.

  ·