This is the poster for an exhibition in Valladolid, Spain of some of my portraits of artists, writers and performers taken between 1963 and 1988 in Europe and the United States.
A little research revealed that the city of Valladolid, in the region of Castile and León, the largest autonomous region in Europe, was founded in the 11th century. Christopher Columbus died there. Phillip II was born there and Isabella and Ferdinand were married there.
The show is being curated by Dª Cristina Albornoz who reviewed my exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2011 for the Spanish magazine XL SEMANAL. At the time she said she would like to do a show for me in Spain and she has.
I took the picture of David Hockney in the mid 1970s when he was living in Paris. This is the courtyard of his studio. I remember running through London Airport to catch the plane, slipped and skidded along the floor. I was helped to my feet by fellow travelers, uninjured, and made the flight. Today it would be safer to miss your plane than run through an airport swinging camera bags.
The show runs from March 14 to May 5 2013.
I
was still living in London in the late 1970s when Robert Priest rang me from Esquire in New York to ask if I would photograph James Baldwin. I knew that he lived in France and it is always a thrill to be asked to go somewhere else to photograph a writer besides a cold house in Hampstead or a cluttered flat in Earl's Court. This was particularly nice because Baldwin lived in Saint-Paul-de-Vence where I had been once before and dined at La Colombe D'Or, one of the most attractive restaurants anywhere.
I drove into the main square of Saint-Paul-de-Vence the evening before I was due to take his picture. As I past a café I noticed sitting at a table facing the street a black man. He was surrounded by five white young ladies all leaning forward towards him wide eyed as he spoke. I recognized the man almost at once as James Baldwin. The girls were young enough to be college students. When I saw him the next day I asked him about it and he said that yes indeed they were American college students. He said he liked that particular café and went there often. The group spotted him and he invited them to sit with him.
We spoke little during my time with him as is often the case when I photograph people. I concentrate on how to arrange the scene beside and behind my subject and where to place the camera. Mostly I allow people to compose themselves, with an occasional, "Just a little to your left...yes, that's it, there." And if the sitter looks too fixed I move away from the camera or ask a question which usually causes people to re-arrange themselves.
I remember James Baldwin saying that when the revolution came he would be out there in the streets with his carving knife. When Occupy Wall Street takes hold I wonder if it will be like that.
I recently heard that the National Portrait Gallery in London want to acquire about twenty of my portraits of writers and artists that I took while I was living there in the seventies and eighties.
Here is one that I took of Hockney at his Paris studio in about 1975. I remember feeling very at home in this courtyard of his studio.
At the request of Caroline's friend Peter, I am posting a photograph of Graham Greene.
This picture was taken around 1979 in Antibes, France on the terrace of his small apartment. I was commissioned by The Daily Telegraph Magazine, arranged through Greene's friend Auberon Waugh, son of Evelyn.
As I got out of the elevator I saw this very tall man standing in the doorway of his apartment, his right arm bent upwards as though he was supporting the top of the door frame. His greeting was, "Just been burgled." I looked more closely and saw the signs of forced entry, the jemmy marks and the split wood. This was shortly after the publication of J'accuse and the Nice mafia were after him.
He kept his wine under the kitchen table in the box it was delivered in and we had a glass. We talked a little about Auberon Waugh and how very funny he was and then about Laurence Durrell who 's writing he found overblown.
The magazine wanted Greene to be with books in the photograph, not only in the background but also with one in his hand, or on his lap. Encouraged by me he refused, calling the idea banal. Editors often ask for obvious props and touches.
