Dmitri Kasterine: Muriel Spark

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Muriel Spark

I had to find a way of distracting her from looking at me with her pretty smile. I said that I needed a minute or two to adjust the settings on the camera. I fiddled with the Rolleiflex, and kept half an eye open to see what she was doing. Then something must have entered her mind and she looked down and forgot I was there. I clicked the shutter.

4 comments:

John GreeneJanuary 10, 2010 at 9:58 PM
Great anecdote. It's funny, many (including me) still feel the need to smile unnaturally when having our photos taken. Was this the case here? I'm curious- what was her reaction to this shot? Though well composed and technically brilliant, perhaps like the way Bogarde reacted to his portrait, I imagine she thought it less than flattering.
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Dmitri KasterineJanuary 11, 2010 at 9:21 AM
Yes, she wrote to me to say that she had asked her agent to take action to make sure it was never seen. I never heard any more.
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HeatherJanuary 26, 2010 at 1:56 PM
Where was this taken? In her backyard?
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Dmitri KasterineJanuary 26, 2010 at 10:22 PM
Yes.
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From the photographer

I started this blog in December 2008. At the time I did not know if I would enjoy it or not, and whether I would get any response to it. I am enjoying it and people have responded. I made a silent pledge at the outset not to say much about my artistic intentions or the composition of the photograph. I would just talk about what led up to taking the picture and what it was like doing it.

The discipline is actually not a strain for me, because I do not desire, and really have never been capable of discussing my intentions, artistic or otherwise. My wanting to take a photograph appears as fast as a bolt and without warning when I spot the subject. I then take it or not, depending on how brave, awake, or fumbling I am with the camera. I enjoy exploring, looking for things that stop me, or frighten me. To fear to take a picture usually means you want to take it.

dmitri@kasterine.com

Biography

Born in England in 1932, I started out as a properly brought up young gentleman with an English mother and White Russian father. He fought wars all his adult life and died in a car accident in the North of England at the age of forty-seven.

Photography came to me at aged eleven, photographing birds at the bird feeder my mother put up outside the kitchen window. After the acute disappointment of the birds being minute specs in the picture, I did cows in the fields around us in Kent.

After the wine trade, Lloyd’s, racing cars, selling cars and flying aeroplanes to Australia, I became a photographer. I photographed my friend’s engagements and their weddings. I worked for magazines and advertising agencies.

I was sent to Los Angeles to photograph Mick Jagger, returned to England via New York where I met Salvador Dali in the elevator at the St. Regis Hotel. Thence started my interest in living here. Three or four years later I moved to America, remarried and lived happily ever after.

Dmitri Kasterine

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Muriel Spark

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