$1,000 increase sends 10 girls to university for a year
Artist: David Hamilton
Title: Adolescence
Medium: Photographic archive print
Edition: Limited Edition Print set
Year created: 1974
Height (inches): 8
Width (inches): 6
Depth (inches): 1
Signed by the artist
Signed Area: front
This piece is unframed
Description of piece:
This limited edition series of a 5 photographic print set has David Hamilton's signature on one of the prints. David Hamilton was a British photographer and film director known for his nude photographs of adolescent girls. Often controversial, the images evoke an effect of dreaminess through soft focus and varied grain. Using a photographic technique akin to painting, he has acknowledged the influence of Lucas Cranach on his style. Born on April 15, 1933 in London, United Kingdom, the artist initially found work as an art director, then a commercial photographer in the 1950s and 60s in France. In 1979, his film Laura was released in France—the movie blends melodrama with soft-core pornography, as wells as Hamilton’s hallmark soft focus. He published numerous photobooks during his life, The Age of Innocence (1995) being one of his most popular. Similar to the work of Jock Sturges and Sally Mann, Hamilton’s erotic subject matter caused complaints of indecency over the decades. In an apparent suicide, the photographer was found dead with a plastic bag over his head on November 25, 2016 in Paris, France.
Artist bio:
Hamilton’s artistic skills began to emerge while he was working at an architect’s office. He went to Paris when he was just 20 years old, and worked there for Peter Knapp of Elle. After gaining recognition, he was offered the position of art director by Queen Magazine in London. However, Hamilton quickly realized his love for Paris was too great, so he returned there. His dreamy, grainy style was becoming recognizable and it brought him success, as his photographs was in demand by popular magazines such as Photo, Twen, and Réalités. Hamilton showed the viewers something new, as he was focused on lesbianism and adolescence, among others. He also left the studio permanently and the neutrality of seamless paper was abandoned. His photographs were soft, without question, and that softness possessed almost the same effects as the work made by Guccione around the same time. By softening his photographs, Hamilton limited the saturation in his colored pieces, and gave his artworks a sense of the past times, like they were all memories. Everything in the images happened a long ago, and it serves not as an official record, but rather a distant memory preserved somewhere in the depths of the mind. The photographer was married to Mona Kristensen, who was a model in many of his early photobooks and made her screen debut in Bilitis. He was also married to Gertrude Hamilton, who co-designed his book The Age of Innocence, one of his best-known.
$1,000 increase sends 10 girls to university for a year
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