Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Great documentary on BBC iPlayer on Brian Duffy  (Read 2953 times)

sperera

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 97
Great documentary on BBC iPlayer on Brian Duffy
« on: January 19, 2010, 04:23:24 am »

Highly entertaining documentary you will enjoy if you're into this kind of thing...here's the blurb on the programme....dunno if you can get this outside UK though, funnily enough we can get it here in Gibraltar but i cant view it when I'm in Spain.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pw...o_Shot_the_60s/

Brian Duffy was one of the greatest photographers of his generation. Along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan he defined the image of the 1960s and was as famous as the stars he photographed. Then suddenly in the 1970s he disappeared from view and burned all his negatives. With the first ever exhibition of his work due, Duffy has agreed to be filmed to talk about his life, his work and why he made it all go up in flames.
Logged
Stephen Perera
www.ulookfierce.com

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Great documentary on BBC iPlayer on Brian Duffy
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2010, 05:23:35 am »

Quote from: sperera
Highly entertaining documentary you will enjoy if you're into this kind of thing...here's the blurb on the programme....dunno if you can get this outside UK though, funnily enough we can get it here in Gibraltar but i cant view it when I'm in Spain.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pw...o_Shot_the_60s/

Brian Duffy was one of the greatest photographers of his generation. Along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan he defined the image of the 1960s and was as famous as the stars he photographed. Then suddenly in the 1970s he disappeared from view and burned all his negatives. With the first ever exhibition of his work due, Duffy has agreed to be filmed to talk about his life, his work and why he made it all go up in flames.






Why not? I live in Spain (Mallorca) and enjoyed the show very much. Sometimes the satellite signal breaks up due to strong wind and/or atmospherics, but my luck was in this time.

I thought it was very interesting - if you are of that age, as I am - because though Bailey and Donovan have been wrung out time after time, and the regulation Bailey clips appeared on this show too, little has been aired about Duffy, most of what was known of him being his unhappy Pirelli venture and his burning of his negatives. Another guy who was neglected was John Cowan, but that's life. Nova had nice work from Harri Peccinotti.

Opinion: as a contemporary and admirer, I thought Bailey top of the heap by a mile; I didn't like Donovan's style much; Duffy - as I said, well-hidden. John Cowan did interesting stuff and if you like studio work I would put the immigrant Barry Lategan on top of that genre.

Distilling it down, the best of them all, in my mind, were Bailey for location fashion; Lategan for studio fashion. If one can include more non-Brits in this short list, Haskins for beauty of Woman, Hans Feurer for everything and for his personal visual style.

The best fashion magazines? One: Linea Italiana.

A funny thing: few great fashion people seem to have made the change to girls (calendar idiom) very well apart from Feurer and Sarah Moon. I don't know if one should include Haskins in the fashion category even though he did do it on and off...

Those were the days!

Rob C

EDIT: reading this again, it becomes clear that trying to keep the topic within a UK scenario becomes very invidious: there were many more people around at the time, in Europe and in America, that are more than worthy of admiration. Perhaps another thread, which would have to become a book!
« Last Edit: January 19, 2010, 05:28:49 am by Rob C »
Logged

sperera

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 97
Great documentary on BBC iPlayer on Brian Duffy
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2010, 07:50:28 am »

thanks for the great reply....I have read with interest and am looking up some of the people you mention I didn't know of.

I was born in 1966 and I'm a big fan of the era which I consider the golden era of fashion.

I also like Horst and Karsh, the latter being more interesting as a character to me.....I also like Demarchelier, Lindbergh as far as more recent shooters go and love the fact Linda Evangelista, Stephanie Seymour, Turlington and the rest of them are working in the 40s....fantastic.

Funny how there is absolutely no-one under 40 i consider inspirational....seems we get more digital artists than photographers these days and the people who think are being avante guarde are still no patch on what was done decades ago with no photoshop etc.

I am lucky to be of the old school, (age 43) so i can comment on both schools as it were.....

On another issue, what i meant was the BBC iPlayer perhaps doesn't work for the USA etc....I also get BBC 1,2,3,4 etc etc on TV.....
« Last Edit: January 19, 2010, 08:29:42 am by sperera »
Logged
Stephen Perera
www.ulookfierce.com

feppe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2906
  • Oh this shows up in here!
    • Harri Jahkola Photography
Great documentary on BBC iPlayer on Brian Duffy
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2010, 01:55:16 pm »

It's UK only.

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Great documentary on BBC iPlayer on Brian Duffy
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2010, 12:45:39 pm »

"I was born in 1966 and I'm a big fan of the era which I consider the golden era of fashion."

God it makes me feel old: I opened my studio doors in February '66!

The golden age of fashion - well, perhaps it was the mid to end of that age. It seems to vary according to one's own age at the time, but I have a feeling that it really started after WW2 and went on to change itself in the late 70s. I am willing to accept that it was also a regional issue - perhaps longer lasting in some countries than in others, but I think that the underlying thing was that in the 1960s there was certainly a sense around that you could try anything and have a fifty-fifty chance of making it. I doubt that can be said of later years or the present. Without doubt, even up to the mid-80s I was able to get clients to finance location calendar shoots half-way around the world. But the fashion side had vanished (for me) because much of the finance for big shoots was forthcoming from fibre companies such as Monsanto and the International Wool Secretariat; when they felt the 70s pinch some of the small fashion companies died.

"I also like Horst and Karsh, the latter being more interesting as a character to me.....I also like Demarchelier, Lindbergh as far as more recent shooters go and love the fact Linda Evangelista, Stephanie Seymour, Turlington and the rest of them are working in the 40s....fantastic."

Horst and others of his ilk were the last of a line; perhaps it's fair to say that Avedon came in as a sort of latter day version because of his very youthful successes with magazines and the then stars of the fashion firmament, but even in the 50s people like Frank Horvat were doing stuff that became popular later on when Bailey, Arthur Elgort, Just Jaeckin and folks like that started to do similar, more free work. Jeanloup Sieff was a little older than Bailey but had a wonderful eye and attitude. Patrick Demarchelier was part of the French invasion that hit the fashion world and Sarah Moon was the French/English woman (ex-model) who had an unmistakeable handwriting; Francis Giacobetti went on to be one of the definitive calendar photography style-setters.

Models? Jean Shrimpton; Twiggy; Celia Hammond; Jill Kennington. Then there was the beautiful Paulina who also made a come-back at one stage.

"Funny how there is absolutely no-one under 40 i consider inspirational....seems we get more digital artists than photographers these days and the people who think are being avante guarde are still no patch on what was done decades ago with no photoshop etc."

I understand completely.

"I am lucky to be of the old school, (age 43) so i can comment on both schools as it were....."

Wish I could claim to be of your 'old school'! As I remarked when I came in, I feel biblical.

Rob C

Pages: [1]   Go Up