David Hamilton (1933-2016)," Hommage à Eugène Boudin, Cabourg (1987)"signed Photograph

David Hamilton (1933-2016)," Hommage à Eugène Boudin, Cabourg (1987)" Photograph in colors, signed

Measures 17x35 cm 

Framed

David Hamilton (15 April 1933 – 25 November 2016) was a British photographer and film director.

Hamilton was born in 1933 and grew up in London. His schooling was interrupted by World War II. As an evacuee, he spent some time in the countryside of Dorset, which inspired some of his work. After the war, Hamilton returned to London and finished his schooling.

His artistic skills began to emerge during a job at an architect's office. At age 20, he went to Paris, where he worked as a graphic designer for Peter Knapp of Elle magazine. After becoming known and successful, he was hired away from Elle by Queen magazine in London as an art director. Hamilton soon realised his love for Paris, however, and after returning there, he became the art director of Printemps, the city's largest department store.[3] While Hamilton was still employed at Printemps, he began doing commercial photography, and the dreamy, grainy style of his images quickly brought him success.[4]

His photographs were in demand by other magazines such as Réalités, Twen and Photo. By the end of the 1960s, all of Hamilton's photographs appeared to have been snapped as if through a hazy mist. His further successes included dozens of photographic books with combined sales well into the millions; five feature films; countless magazine displays and museum and gallery exhibitions. His work was exhibited in every one of the first three years of The Photographers' Gallery, London, but was roundly condemned by photojournalist Euan Duff for its "cliched pictorial symbolism, exploiting soft focus, pastel colours, country landscapes and old houses, old fashioned clothes and even white doves to give a phoney impression of heaIthy-food ad naturalness; they are a sort of wholemeal stoneground pornography," exhibited "because the gallery needs the money."

In December 1977, Images Gallery — a studio owned by Bob Persky[6] at 11 East 57th Street in Manhattan — showed his photographs at the same time that Bilitis was released. At that time, art critic Gene Thornton wrote in The New York Times that they reveal "the kind of ideal that regularly was expressed in the great paintings of the past". Hamilton has said that his work looks for "the candor of a lost paradise". In his book, Contemporary Photographers, curator Christian Caujolle wrote that Hamilton worked only with two fixed devices: "a clear pictorial intention and a latent eroticism, ostensibly romantic, but asking for trouble".

In 1995, Hamilton said that people "have made contradictions of nudity and purity, sensuality and innocence, grace and spontaneity. I try to harmonize them, and that's my secret and the reason for my success". Besides depicting young women and girls, Hamilton composed photographs of flowers, men, landscapes, farm animals, pigeons, and still lifes of fresh fruit. Several of his photographs look like oil paintings. Most of his work gives the impression of timelessness because of the absence of cars, modern buildings and advertisement boards. In 1976, Denise Couttès explained Hamilton's phenomenal success on page 6 of The Best of David Hamilton. His images, she wrote, "express escapism. People can only escape from the violence and cruelty of the modern world through dreams and nostalgia".