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Terence Donovan (photographer)

Terence Daniel Donovan (14 September 1936 – 22 November 1996) was a British photographer and film director, best remembered for his fashion photography of the 1960s. He oversaw the music video to Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” and “Simply Irresistible”.

Donovan was born in Stepney in the East End of London to Lilian Constance V. (née Wright) and Daniel Donovan,[citation needed] and took his first photo at the age of 15. The bomb damaged industrial landscape of his home town became the backdrop of much of his fashion photography, and he set the trend for positioning fashion models in stark and gritty urban environments. Flats and gasometers were popular settings, and he often had the models adopt adventurous poses. He wedged one model up the side of a building, and photographed another as she posed dangling from a parachute.

Along with David Bailey and Brian Duffy, he captured, and in many ways helped create the Swinging London of the 1960s: a culture of high fashion and celebrity chic. The trio of photographers socialised with actors, musicians and royalty, and found themselves elevated to celebrity status. Together, they were the first real celebrity photographers.

Donovan shot for various fashion magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, as well as directing some 3000 commercials, and a 1973 movie Yellow Dog. He also made documentaries and music videos, and painted.

Donovan was a black belt in judo and co-wrote a popular judo book Fighting Judo with former World Judo Gold medallist Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki.

Donovan committed suicide,after suffering from depression. His last interview[2] appeared in a British photography magazine a few weeks after his death.

via Terence Donovan (photographer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

and http://www.terencedonovan.co.uk

When he died in 1996, the photographer Terence Donovan left tidy packages of almost a million prints and exposures spanning his 40-year photographic career.

‘They were everywhere’, says his widow Diana Donovan. ‘In boxes all over the house, in the studio, and in a house in the East End.’ The photographs revealed an unexpected range of work – not just the familiar glamour shots but tender snaps of his children enjoying their childhood’s and powerful photo-essays documenting the under-belly of London life. This week they go on show at the Museum of London.

Mention the name Terence Donovan and most people think of his naked, slightly startled Julie Christie, his iconic Princess of Wales, or his technically impeccable fashion photographs for publications like Vogue.

No one was better at capturing partly-dressed models in expensive hotel bedrooms. His video of Alaia-clad mannequins strutting to Robert Palmer’s hit Addicted To Love – for which he was nominated one of Vanity Fair’s ‘Men of the Decade’ in 1989 – seemed to epitomise everything that Terence Donovan represented. But his first retrospective sets out to challenge all that.

‘Everybody thought Terence was just a fashion photographer, and these photographs show that he was a great deal more,’ says Diana Donovan, his wife of 26 years.

Read more :  http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/1999/mar/15/features11.g23

Brian Duffy (photographer)

Brian Duffy (15 June 1933 – 31 May 2010) was a celebrated English photographer and film producer, best remembered for his fashion photography of the 1960s and 1970s and his creation of the iconic “Aladdin Sane” image for David Bowie.

 

 

 

via Brian Duffy (photographer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The inventive and innovative photographer Brian Duffy shot some of the best known pictures of the Swinging Sixties for magazines such as Vogue, Queen, Town and Nova in Britain, and Elle in France, and became as infamous as his friends and contemporaries David Bailey and Terence Donovan. His dynamic style of fashion photography and his playful portraits of Michael Caine, John Lennon and Harold Wilson leapt off the pages and embodied the free spirit of the era. In the 1970s, this irreverent, occasionally cantankerous character, moved into advertising and devised intriguing, effective and memorable posters and full-page ads for Benson & Hedges cigarettes and Smirnoff vodka, as well as the striking cover for David Bowie’s first chart-topping album, Aladdin Sane.

Yet, at the end of 1979, something seemed to snap in Duffy when he walked into his studio and was told by an assistant that they had run out of toilet paper. “I realised I was chairman, CEO and senior stockholder of my business and I was now responsible for toilet paper,” he later reflected. “Ninety-nine per cent of my work was advertising and crap. The people who were hiring me I didn’t like. Keeping a civil tongue up the rectum of a society that keeps you paid is an art which I was devoid of. I had nothing more to say in photographs. I’d taken all the snaps I needed to take. Maybe I didn’t think I was good enough.”

Whatever triggered this breakdown, it resulted in Duffy sending his staff home and attempting to burn boxes of his negatives in the garden. A neighbour objected to the acrid, black smoke and called the council who sent round an official to put a stop to this act of lunacy. This fortuitous intervention meant that, even though Duffy stopped working as a photographer and spent the last three decades of his life restoring furniture, his son Chris could eventually catalogue the remaining negatives and talk his father into agreeing to his first exhibition, held at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London last autumn. Earlier this year, Duffy was also the subject of a BBC4 documentary, The Man Who Shot The Sixties, which reunited him with the actress Joanna Lumley, a favourite model of his in his heyday, and Lord Puttnam, the film producer who had been his agent between 1966 and 1969.

Duffy was born to Irish parents in north London in 1933. The family moved to East Ham and remained there throughout the Second World War. After two attempts at evacuating him and his two brothers and sister – another sister died of meningitis aged three – his mother resolved that they would not be separated again. He became an unruly child and troublesome teenager, cutting school and running amok on bomb sites, until an attempt at social engineering by teachers at a progressive school in South Kensington introduced him to the opera, ballet and art galleries. In 1950, he enrolled at St Martins School of Art to study painting, but soon switched to dress design because of the added attraction, as he recalled, of “a lot of good-looking girls doing it.”

After graduating he began working as an assistant designer at Susan Small Dresses and at Victor Stiebel. In 1955 he was offered an apprenticeship with the Balenciaga haute couture house in Paris but turned it down as his soon-to-be-wife June was pregnant with Chris, their first child. Instead, he freelanced for Harper’s Bazaar as a fashion illustrator and then decided to take up photography “as an easy way to make money.” He assisted Adrian Flowers and in 1957 bluffed his way through an interview with Audrey Withers, the formidable Vogue editor.

“The arrogance!” he admitted. “I showed them a bunch of off-the-wall snaps I had, including one of a glass eye with a snail on it. I don’t know how I had the nerve.”

While shooting Otto Klemperer for his first Vogue assignment, he forgot to take the lens cap off his Leica camera but the boys in the dark room spoiled the film accidentally on purpose and he photographed the German conductor again during rehearsals and got away with it. Duffy stayed at Vogue for six years, and photographed the leading fashion models of the day, Jean Shrimpton, Jennifer Hocking and Pauline Stone. He encouraged them to drink or sing and often preferred the streets to the more formal environment of the studio.

Dubbed the Black Trinity or the Terrible Trio, Bailey, Donovan and Duffy enjoyed a healthy rivalry and brought a sense of fun and irrevence to what had been a staid provision. Indeed, they shook up the world of fashion and publishing nearly as much as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones revolutionised the music industry. Duffy had an uncanny eye for detail and the unusual, as well as a knack for solving technical problems which made him stand out in the pre-Photoshop era. He was also something of an enfant terrible and a mischief-maker, and illustrated a Nova article entitled “How To Undress For Your Husband” with a series of photos of Amanda Lear, a model whose true gender was the object of much speculation.

From 1964, Duffy freelanced for a host of magazines like Glamour and Esquire in the US as well as the Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Observer newspapers. In particular, he was celebrated for his black and white portraits of such well-known figures of the sixties as Jane Birkin, William Burroughs, Sammy Davis Jnr, Charlton Heston, Christine Keeler, Reggie Kray, Sidney Poitier, Nina Simone, Terence Stamp and Keith Waterhouse. In 1965, he shot his first Pirelli Calendar in Monaco and went to Mexico to document the filming of Louis Malle’s madcap comedy-adventure Viva Maria! starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau.

Duffy developed an interest in film and started a production company with the novelist Len Deighton. In 1968, they produced an adaptation of Deighton’s crime caper Only When I Larf, directed by Basil Dearden and starring Richard Attenborough and David Hemmings. After seeing a performance of Oh! What A Lovely War at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, Duffy convinced Bailey to invest in a film version of Joan Littlewood’s anti-war musical. However, Deighton, who wrote the screenplay, had his name taken off the credits, and Duffy dismissed the 1969 film, Attenborough’s directorial debut, and its cast – including John Mills, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Maggie Smith and Susannah York – as the work of “a gang of luvvies.”

Diplomacy was never Duffy’s forte, and he famously fell out with the British pop artist Allen Jones over the 1973 Pirelli calendar they collaborated on. However, the mixture of techniques employed for that project inspired the powerful and distinctive cover of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane. “Tony DeFries, his [then] manager, wanted to make the most expensive cover you could possibly get a record company to pay for,” Duffy recalled. “He couldn’t have come to be a better con artist than my good self. Dye transfer is a genius method of being able to spend the most amount of money to get reproduction from a colour transparency on to a piece of paper. And we went to Switzerland, the most expensive place to get a plate made. Bowie was interested in the Elvis ring which had the letters TCB [taking care of business] as well as the lightning flash. I drew the design on his face. We used lipstick to fill in the red. To me, it [the cover] was competent, very competent, but I wouldn’t take it much beyond that.”

Bowie hired Duffy again to help create the covers of two of his subsequent albums; 1979′s Lodger, with the British pop artist Derek Boshier, and Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), with the British graphic designer and painter Edward Bell, the following year.

By then, the photographer and his Duffy Design Concepts company had become over-reliant on commercial clients and, even if his eye-catching, playful, surreal campaigns for Smirnoff and Benson & Hedges – the golden cigarette packet as mousetrap, in a bird cage or inside a bird’s egg – won awards, he grew tired of the medium and the sycophants and quit in spectacular fashion with the attempted burning of his negatives.

Duffy brought the same single-mindedness and perfectionism to restoring antiques in his workshop in Camden. This line of work continued the family tradition since his father, who had spent time in prison for his IRA activities, had been a cabinet-maker. Duffy also lectured for the British Antique Furniture Restorers’ Association. He died of pulmonary fibrosis.

“I never wanted to be famous,” Duffy said in the BBC documentary. “Artists are always talking drivel, including moi, because the work is the statement.” When asked how he’d like to be remembered in the annals of photography, he replied: “He wasn’t as steady as a tripod.”

BY PIERRE PERRONE : THURSDAY 17 JUNE 2010

Profile: Norman Parkinson

Norman Parkinson is generally recognised as the man who fathered a new age of stylish storytelling in fashion photography. He blasted the rather stuffy and staid traditions of the 1930s photography, for which, he once said: “All the girls had their knees bolted together”.

Railing against the conservatism of the day when he entered the industry in 1931, Parkinson photographed some of Britain’s most beautiful women in fun, feisty and whimsical set-ups, blazing a trail which would be taken up by David Bailey and Brian Duffy.

“I like to make people look as good as they’d like to look, and with luck, a shade better,” he famously once said. This formula evidently worked well, as one of Parkinson’s favourite and most frequent models was the actress and author Wenda Rogerson, who became his wife of 40 years.

Parkinson’s career spanned seven decades before he died on location in Malaysia in 1990. Between 1945 and 1960 he worked for Vogue, snapping Hollywood greats and the supermodels of the day. Other glossies which regularly printed his wares included Queen, Life, Town & Country and Harper’s Bazaar. Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret Thatcher are among the glitzy names on his portfolio. He was there at the very start of Beatlemania snapping the Fab Four outside a hotel in Russell Square in 1963.

Parkinson was often invited to photograph the royal family and was there to produce the first official photographs of Prince Charles at his investiture as Prince of Wales. In 1980 Parkinson was commissioned to photograph the Queen mother sat between her two daughters, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, for her 80 birthday.

Iconic images of world’s oldest working supermodel Carmen Dell’Orefice, 80, taken by Parkinson decades ago were among those recently auctioned at the London College of Fashion after the model lost her life savings after investing in a Bernie Madoff scam.

‘The Godfather of British Fashion Photography – The Glamour Years’ is at Gallery Vassie from 26 November 2011 until 21 January 2012, www.galleryvassie.com

via Profile: Norman Parkinson – Features – Art – The Independent.

Dulcie Gray: Actress whose celebrated career stretched across eight decades – Obituaries

Dulcie Gray’s career was inextricably bound up with that of her husband, Michael Denison, with whom she appeared on stage in numerous productions. Unusually – but appositely – their last joint appearance was one of their most successful; both were in the original cast of producer Bill Kenwright’s successful revival of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, directed by Peter Hall; in 1996 they made their New York debuts, touching 80, in the play’s Broadway production to great acclaim.

via Dulcie Gray: Actress whose celebrated career stretched across eight decades – Obituaries – News – The Independent.

and  http://westend.broadwayworld.com/board/printthread.php?thread=1038994&boardid=3

4 Reasons Why You Need a Reflector for a Photo Shoot – There Is More to It Than Just a Reflector

By Michael Abela

I have to admit it. I rejoice working with reflectors during my outdoor photo shoots. This is for the simple reason that it can be used in a number of different ways. It purely makes your photographic life much easier. Do you possess a reflector or maybe you are planning to buy one? Hereunder I have listed for you the basic advantages of working with a reflector when doing outdoor photo shoots.

Diffuser

If you buy a 5 in 1 type of reflector you can use your reflector as a diffuser. Holding the reflector above your model you can diffuse direct sunlight into softer light. In doing so, the model’s features will turn out to be more graceful and smoother. This is a vital accessory particularly when you find yourself in situations where excessive harsh light is unavoidable.

In situations where you are forced to use artificial light, a diffuser is very helpful in minimizing the ugly shadows associated with flashes.

Artificial Light

I find it annoying having to use artificial light when actually I am working outdoors. It is pointless having ample natural light all around you and you succumb to artificial light. I understand that in certain circumstances, you need that little extra light to lighten dark areas, such as below the chin, nose and eyes.

A small reflector is all that is needed. You can take advantage of natural light by simply redirecting light to the desired areas.

Another important aspect is that you do not need to worry any more about getting extra batteries for your flash light! Power source is unlimited.

Wind Breaker

Photo shoots during windy days can be problematic. Models are most of the time drying their watery eyes and makeup has to be retouch constantly. The situation gets even worse when working on sandy beaches or dusty areas.

By strategically using a medium size reflector you can easily shield the model’s face from these extreme conditions. This is very effective if you are doing portraits.

Backdrop

An effective way of using a reflector is by using it as a backdrop. Depending on the size of your reflector, it can block unwanted noise in the background. Again, this is very effective when doing portraiture. Referring back to the 5 in 1 reflector, the choice of background usually is gold, silver, black or white.

A reflector can be the best accessory you can carry with you during your photo shoots. Its uses are endless. To a certain extent I would prefer leaving an extra lens behind rather than a reflector. If like me, you like working with ambient light, I strongly suggest that next time you venture for your outdoor photo shoot you grab that reflector along.

Practice makes perfect but knowledge can speed up your learning process. Read and expand your knowledge about reflectors in order to ameliorate and improve your photo shoots.

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Author: Michael Abela

Source: http://michaelabela.weebly.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Abela
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