Video: Age of Innocence: Infamous Photos by David Hamilton
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
David Hamilton is one of the most successful photographers of our time. His works were exhibited in the largest galleries in Europe and America, and his books were published in millions of copies. However, first of all, sadly, the work of the photographer is known in connection with numerous accusations of immorality and even the spread of child pornography.
Hamilton was born in London in 1933, but after completing his education, interrupted by an evacuation during World War II, he moved to France, where he received a position as a graphic designer for ELLE magazine. His career developed rapidly, and soon he was already known as a photographer with his own recognizable style. By the late 1960s, Hamilton's sensual, dreamy photographs were being printed in many publications, and photographers in fashion magazines began to copy his style of shooting. His further success was accompanied by dozens of millions of albums, five films and countless exhibitions.
Hamilton's shots are characterized by soft focus, light grain, and the neo-romantic spirit of the hippie generation. Hamilton's typical model is a very young girl or a teenage girl with long flowing hair, almost no makeup and, from the song, you can't throw a word out, often almost without clothes. Soft draperies of long dresses, light sandals, graceful silhouettes, natural light - all this creates amazingly harmonious images that turn into a hymn to the “age of innocence” - a fleeting period of awakening sensuality.
However, it cannot be denied that many of these photographs are overtly erotic, which, due to the tender age of the models, made Hamilton's work the subject of endless debate on the topic "is it pornography or art?" When the spirit of the 70s, which was characterized by a very free attitude towards eroticism and sex, gave way to the more conservative mood of the 90s, this debate turned into a practical stage. In America, citizens full of Christian indignation staged protests at the doors of shops selling Hamilton's books. In the UK, police have seized albums from photography enthusiasts on several occasions, calling them child pornography. In 2010, one man was even sued for possession of four books, including The Age of Innocence by Hamilton and Still time by Sally Mann. By the way, Mann, in whose photographs they also often find pedophilic and, moreover, incestuous overtones, is one of the very few contemporary photographers who has received public approval from Hamilton.
However, in France, which has long become the photographer's second homeland, passions around the moral aspect of Hamilton's work have never reached such intensity. The master himself perceives attacks and accusations rather indifferently, answering that people who are smart enough to distinguish between sensuality and pornography will appreciate the artistic component of photographs, and not echo the hysteria fanned by the press.
Be that as it may, David Hamilton, went down in the history of photography on a par with such figures as Annie Leibovitz and Helmut Newton. Their work continues to win new fans and inspire young photographers even now.
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