Robert Freeman - Beatles favorite photographer

Photographer, designer, and cameraman Robert Freeman is most famous for photographing and designing five of the Beatles album covers, in addition to some other tasks he carried out on their behalf. After graduating from Cambridge in 1959, he became a professional photographer, with assignments for The Sunday Times and other magazines. One of his assignments was photographing jazz musicians at a London jazz festival, which led to a portfolio including portraits of John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Dizzy Gillespie, Elvin Jones, and Coleman Hawkins. These were the photos he sent to Beatles manager Brian Epstein in the summer of 1963, after a friend who had filmed the group for Granada Television tipped Freeman off that the Beatles would make good photographic subjects. He was a photographer for  Pirelli calendar in 1964...

In the 1960s, Freeman was married to a German-born model - known at the time as Sonny Freeman, with whom he had two children. He was later married to author Tiddy Rowan with whom he had a daughter. There was a romor that Freemans wife,Sonny Drane (a model and 1964 Pirelli calendar-girl), had a year-lon had a affair with John Lennon


Freemans photos:

Terence Donovan - fachion phography matter

Terence Donovan was a celebrated photographer and film director, perhaps best remembered for his fashion photography of the 1960s, or for the music video to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love". 

He was born in Stepney in the East End of London, 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.

Along with David Bailey, he captured, and in many ways helped create the Swinging London of the 1960s: a culture of high fashion and celebrity chic. Both 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.

Inevitably, Donovan brought these two distinct approaches to magazine portraiture too. His first photograph for Vogue, for example, a portrait of the conductor George Solti walking the streets of Covent Garden, is a skilful long-lens observation shot, but throughout the 1970s and 1980s and frequently for Vogue, he concentrated on the studio portrait, wherein any element of chance was, for the most part, removed. The results - most particularly a series of headshots of the comedians Max Wall, Norman Wisdom and the writer and wit Osbert Lancaster - are determinedly unflattering with no indulgence to the sitter’s vanity or the ‘look’ of the magazine. From 1970, while continuing to shoot fashion for a variety of magazines, he explored in earnest the more lucrative field of advertising photography, also turning his hand to the moving image.




 

Vintage prints of Donovan’s fashion and portrait work, particularly those from the 1960s and 1970s, are rare. Even more so are ‘signed’ works. He belonged to the generation that never considered that there could ever be a market for what was essentially commercial photography, no matter how accomplished. Donovan’s diffidence went further. As a working photographer he spurned compilations of his work or exhibitions of past highpoints, because, presumably, he felt the best was still to come. In his lifetime, he published only three books of his photographs. None was particularly historical nor any an anthology of his greatest moments and all were idiosyncratic. The first in 1964 Women Throoo the Eyes of Smudger Terence Donovan, was a slim booklet of women he had recently photographed . Glances, the second, coming nearly twenty years later in 1983, was a book of nudes and the third and last, Fighting Judo from 1985, the most unexpected: a ‘blow-by-blow’ manual of judo moves. (Donovan was a black belt 1st dan).

Unsurprisingly, there are few signed prints in the Donovan archive. However, what has surfaced is a cache of contact photographs, curiously authenticated. For the decade 1959 to the end of the 1960s, Donovan separated from his contact sheets, and invariably printed up to the standard of a finished print, those images he favoured for publication – promptly stabbing them clean through with the point of a pencil. This is surely a forceful stamp of authorship and authority from one of British photography’s foremost identities. And one whom, it must be said, made strenuous efforts to avoid a conventional photographic legacy.

Donovan committed suicide in 1996 after suffering depression as a result of steroids he'd been taking to treat a skin condition.

Terence Donovan photos:

Norman Parkinson - out of the studio

Norman Parkinson (21 April 1913 – 15 February 1990) 

 "I like to make people look as good as they'd like to look, and with luck, a shade better"

English photographer and eccentric whose career saw fashion photography transform itself from decorative depiction of aristocratic ladies to a more commercial and democratic medium. After apprenticeship to the court photographers Speaight & Sons of Bond Street, he set up his own studio at the age of 21. Like Cecil Beaton, Parkinson was noted for taking his sitters out of the studio and encouraging them to move naturally, resulting in elegant portraits captured in contrastingly grimy or working‐class environments. Sittings with contemporary figures including the Sitwells, Vaughan Williams, and Kathleen Ferrier for publications such as The Bystander, Life, and Look led to a close relationship with Condé Nast from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Parkinson pioneered the outdoor use of colour photography with then difficult to source early 35 mm stock, which he used for landmark fashion imagery for American Vogue. Many models were exulted to fame by Parkinson including Celia Hammond (who he discovered for Queen magazine), Jan Ward, Adele Collins, Davina Taylor, Carmen dell'Orefice, Enid Boulting and the first 'supermodel' and wife of fellow photographer Irving Penn, Lisa Fonssagrives.He spotted Nena von Schlebrügge, the mother of Uma Thurman at age 16 when she left her senior school in Stockholm, and brought her to London to model for Vogue Magazine.
In 1963, Parkinson moved from Twickenham to Tobago, where he set up a pig farm and marketed his famous ‘Porkinson's Bangers’ sausages. One of the first fashion photographers to enjoy personal celebrity, he was latterly known as the unofficial royal portraitist.

"The only thing that gets in the way of a really good photograph, is the camera".

Norman Parkinson Photo Gallery

Harry Peccanotti - most talented men to ever hold a camera.

Every photographer who’s made a career out of pressing shutter buttons in front of beautiful women owes a great debt to Harri Peccinotti. He was the first person to consistently capture the sexuality of everyday activities on camera: subversively pleasing sights like girls carefully sucking on popsicles, close-ups of butts on bike seats, and California beach bunnies unknowingly shot with telephoto lenses.

Harry Peccanotti at work

Biography


Harry Peccanotti (also known as Harri Peccinotti) is a photographer, known for his erotic work.He was born in London in 1935. At 14, he dropped out of school to design album covers for the jazz label Esquire Records. In the 50s, he began working as an advertising photographer and eventually served as art director for glossy behemoths like Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair UK. But he will forever be remembered as the main brain behind Nova, a British magazine first published in 1965 that set new standards for both graphic and journalistic content by integrating ideas borrowed from the psychedelic subculture and underground press of the day.

In ’68, after completing an assignment in Vietnam, he photographed the now legendary Pirelli pinup calendar that paired love poems with photographic interpretations of the verses—alluring, tastefully shot women lounging around the Tunisian island of Djerba. Pirelli—and everyone in the world who wasn’t blind—liked it so much they invited him back the following year. This time Harri proceeded to up the raunch factor by featuring the aforementioned California girls in various states of undress.

Harri’s recent endeavors have focused on ethnographic reportage, filmmaking, and publishing books of his work. He also continues to shoot fashion and advertisements and is a photography consultant for the weekly French newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

His life's work is celebrated in the retrospective book "HP" by Harri Peccinotti.


Covers of Nova Magazine that was made by Harri Peccinotti

Harry Peccanotti Photo Gallery

Brian Duffy - man of ART

Brian Duffy - self portrait

First years


Duffy was born to Irish parents in London in 1933. During World War II he was evacuated with his two brothers and sister to Kings Langley where he was taken in by the actors Roger Livesey and Ursula Jeans. After only three weeks his mother, unhappy about her four children being split up from the family insisted they all return to London. They were evacuated once more to Wales but returned to London having experienced living on a primitive farm after a month.
In 1950 he began  St. Martins School of Art at first wishing to be a painter but soon changed to dress design. He finished in 1953 and immediately began working as an assistant designer at Susan Small Dresses after which he worked for Victor Steibel, preferred designer to Princess Margaret.


Professional career


In 1955 he began freelancing as a fashion artist for Harper's Bazaar. It was here that he first came into contact with photography. Inspired by the photographic contact sheets he saw passing through the art director's desk he decided to find a job as a photographers assistant. Unsuccessfully, he applied for a job with John French, after which he managed to get a job at Carlton studios and then at Cosmopolitan Artists. He left there to take a job as assistant the photographer Adrian Flowers. While working for Flowers he received his first photographic commission from Ernestine Carter, the then fashion editor of The Sunday Times.
In 1957 he was hired by British Vogue where he remained working until 1963. During this period he worked closely with top models of the period, including Joy Weston, Jennifer Hocking, Paulene Stone and Jean Shrimpton.
Apart from Vogue, Duffy also worked for publications including Glamour, Esquire, Town Magazine, Queen Magazine as well as The Observer, The Times and The Daily Telegraph. He also worked on contract for French Elle for two periods the first between 1963 and 1968, and the second between 1971 and 1979.
In 1965 Duffy was asked to create a Pirelli calendar which he shot on location in Monaco. He was commissioned to shoot a second calendar in 1973 which he created in collaboration with British pop artist Allen Jones and air brush specialist Phillip Castle

One morning in 1979, Brian Duffy, then one of the most famous photo-graphers in the world, came into work. One of his assistants told him they had run out of toilet paper. His memory is hazy, he admits, but what happened next became an ­episode of snapper folklore.
"He realised," he recalls in a documentary that airs on BBC4 ­tonight, " that He was making decisions about toilet ­paper. And He thought This has got to end. Either by me murdering my staff, killing myself, or setting fire to the whole fucking thing." So he gathered every negative and transparency he had ever shot and burned them on a fire in his back garden. After that, he never took another picture.
Except, as it turns out, negatives do not easily catch fire. And when they do, they produce an acrid black smoke: this bonfire ended when an official from Camden council peered over the fence and insisted Duffy put it out. Duffy packed what remained away in shoeboxes in his attic and turned to painting and furniture-restoring. It was only in 2007, when his son Chris went through the boxes, that he reluctantly agreed that they were worth another look. This led to a show in London last year – the first, anywhere, of his career.
To devotees of photography, these surviving pictures were like a salvaged stack from the library at Alexandria. Lost portraits of Michael Caine, John Lennon, Nina Simone, William Burroughs, ­Reggie Kray and many more. And ­fashion shots that remind us how this man  created the visual spirit of the swinging 60s: making ­fashion fun, colloquial, young.
In 2009, at the behest of his son, Chris, Duffy resumed work as a photographer and shot images of people he had photographed in the 1960s and  70s.
Duffy died on 31 May 2010, after suffering from a degenerative lung disease

Brian Duffy photos

John Lennon

Arnold Schwarzenegger

David Dowie

Pirelli Calendar

The first calendar in 1962 featured models from Pirelli’s key markets with images of tyres super-imposed on them! Pirelli’s UK subsidiary produced the calendar. It was almost just a ‘pin-up’ calendar but Robert Freeman, who photographed the Beatle’s ‘magical tours’, lifted it from mediocrity with his shots of models on the beaches of the Cote d’Azur.
The calendar is famous for its limited availability because it is not sold and is only given as a corporate gift to a restricted number of important Pirelli customers and celebrity VIPs. The Pirelli Calendar is perhaps the world's only prestigious and exclusive "girly" calendar, featuring pictures generally considered glamour photography including artistic nudes.
Publication was discontinued after the 1974 issue as an economising cut back in response to the world recession from the oil shock.Tyres were still featured in the 1984-1994 calendars, but the images of these products were always displayed discreetly. They were shown as a mark in the sand or as ruffles in a glamorous dress, for example. Once the calendar became more sophisticated, showing the product wasn’t necessary any more. It was resurrected 10 years later and has been published regularly since then.
Appearance on the calendar has become a mark of distinction for those photographic models that are chosen, as well as for the photographers commissioned to produce the images used. Over the years the supermodels and celebrities who have appeared have included Sienna Miller, Naomi Campbell, Eva Riccobono, Malgosia Bela, Gisele Bündchen, Emanuela de Paula, Sonny Freeman Drane, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Selma Blair, Lauren Bush, Elsa Benitez, Laetitia Casta, Rachael Leigh Cook, Milla Jovovich, Doutzen Kroes, Heidi Klum, Sophia Loren, Penélope Cruz, Brittany Murphy, Amy Smart, Julia Stiles, Karolina Kurkova, Caroline Trentini, Raica Oliveira, Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Bridget Moynahan, Shannyn Sossamon, Mena Suvari, Monet Mazur, Aurelie Claudel, Fernanda Tavares, Isabeli Fontana, Frankie Rayder, Angela Lindvall, Hilary Swank and Yamila Díaz.

Photographers:

Robert Freeman (first calendar), Brian Duffy, Peter Knapp, Harry Peccinotti, Francis Giacobetti, Sarah Moon (first women photographer for Pirelli), Hans Feurer, Uwe Ommer, Norman Parkinson, Bert Stern, Terence Donovan, Barry Lategan, Joyce Tennyson, Arthur Elgort, Clive Arrowsmith, John Claridge, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Bruce Weber, Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Nick Knight, Patrick Demarchelier, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot (The 2006 Pirelli calendar), Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin (The 2007 Pirelli calendar), Peter Beard, Terry Richardson, Karl Lagerfeld.

The 2007 Pirelli Calendar
 
Sophia Loren agreed to appear semi-naked for the  Pirelli Calendar at 72 her decision was controversial.


The 2009 Pirelli Calendar


Peter Beard, who photographed the calendar in 2009, described it as a ‘living sculpture’.  He photographed his models in the wild African landscape of Botswana which remains unspoiled and has a high concentration of wildlife.  The Kalahari outback and the Okavango River delta were used as backdrops to the free-spirited and natural look of the models. Beard has lived in Africa for thirty years.




The 2010 Pirelli Calendar


It was shot in Brazil by the provocative photographer, Terry Richardson, who seems to have brought an element of playfulness to the calendar with his photographs of models hosing themselves or eating bananas.


Pirelli Calendar Photos

Richard Avedon - wonder boy of fashion photography

The New York Times:  "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."

Richard Avedon (15.05.1923 - 1.10.2004)

Richard Avedon has taken some of the greatest celebrity photographs in the 20th century. Avedon was born in 1923 and began working as a department store photographer in 1944. In 1945, he began working for Harper’s Bazaar, taking photographs of Andy Warhol, Jacques Cousteau, Brigitte Bardot and Buster Keaton throughout his career there.

Avedon also worked for Vogue, Look and The New Yorker during his storied career. Also he  make fashion advertisement photograph series  for Gianni Versace, starting from the spring/summer campaign 1980. He also photographed the Calvin Klein Jeans campaign featuring a fifteen year old Brooke Shields.
Avedon is known for his minimalistic photographs of celebrities and public figures, typically in front of ordinary backgrounds. In 1959, Avedon worked alongside Truman Capote on a book documenting the most important people of the 20th century. Richard Avedon was voted by Popular Photography magazine as one of the ten greatest photographers in the world.

Some photography of Richard Avedon: