He Wasn't as Steady as a Tripod

"...Sparked me up, like the thing on the table with the bolts here...TZZZT!"

Now then—I really do mean to take tomorrow off, as I'm supposed to. (As you can probably tell, I get a little obsessive about staying glued to the computer.) But I'd like to leave you with a link to a film that I think might be perfect for your Saturday.

It goes on for about an hour, so you'll have to budget some time. It's about Brian Duffy, one-third of the "black trinity" of British photographers of the 1960s. (The others were David Bailey, best-known of the three because he was the model for the character played by David Hemmings in Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Blow Up" of 1966, and Terrence Donovan, who took his own life in 1996.) Duffy is perhaps best remembered for his mode of departure: he made a pile of all his prints and negatives and put a match to it, and walked away from photography for decades.

Recently, however, now 75 and in failing health, he returned to photography, and had his first show. The BBC did a documentary about it, and it's now online at his website.

I have to mention, I love the Klemperer story. But it's the creative arc that's revealed through the piece that's really arresting.

At any rate, you can watch for yourself. It's pretty terrific, especially if you have an iconoclastic streak. There's no direct link: to get to it, you have to go to the website > exhibits & links > BBC DOCUMENTARY. You can watch it online or download it.

Bob Stevenson told me about this; thanks, Bob.

Mike

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[Hopefully temporary] UPDATE: We appear to have whacked their bandwidth, hardly surprising with an hour-long video on a private website. That turns this post into naught but a tease. Sorry. But do keep this in mind, and check back. It's really worth seeing. —Ed.

UPDATE #2: A week later, Chris Duffy writes to say that we did crash their shared server, but the video is now on Vimeo. So, have another go—it should work now.

UPDATE #3: Sad to say Duffy passed away on May 31st, 2010.

Featured Comment by Andy Forbes: "I have been a fan of Duffy since the '60s. Rather than buy photography mags I used to buy the fashion mags that Duffy, Bailey and Donovan contributed to. The documentary style of fashion shoot they used was fascinating and totally different to the accepted style of fashion shoots at the time. There is a wonderful quote by Duffy from the '60s: 'Before 1960 a fashion photographer was tall, thin and camp. But we three are different: short, fat and heterosexual!'

"I was fortunate to be invited to the private viewing of the Duffy exhibition, which features in the documentary, at the Chris Beetles gallery last October. It was a great night and interesting to see how the players, models and fashion editors had weathered, some not so well as others! Bailey was there for a short while and it is obvious he has great respect for his old friend Duffy. The surviving photographs are wonderful—I went to the exhibition four times to drink it all in. The BBC documentary is a bonus and I recorded it when it was broadcast a couple of weeks ago and have watched it several times since and it shows Duffy is still as rebellious now as he was in the '60s.

"Duffy's son Chris is the man really responsible for all of this and has worked tirelessly over the last couple of years or so to bring Duffy back into the public eye and thank God he has, he really deserves his place in the history of photography and the period. Hopefully there is more to come."

Comments

[Bahi]

I'm downloading that Duffy doc… I think his server might have been TOPped.

Many people in Britain who have no interest in photography know Bailey's name mainly because of his appearance in a series of Olympus adverts on TV for the Trip 35 in the 70s and again through the 80s. In implying his fame, it actually made him much more famous and many people here who'd never be able to identify a book or shot of his know the line from one of his ads: "Who do you think you are? David Bailey?" (It's a line that photographers who take pictures all the time tend to hear quite often in London, even from passers by.)

Several of the ads are on YouTube and some are still funny.

BTW, I absolutely loathed Antonioni's Blow Up when I saw it in the '80s in a cinema but loved it when I watched it again last year. I suspected even before putting the movie on that I'd love it this time around. Can't really explain why.

[Robin P]

Glad that those of you outside the UK are now able to see it.
2 things that struck me in particular:- the dry, wry dialogue from Bailey that implied "why are you talking about this bloke instead of me" and a sense of gratitude that my teenage years coincided with the glorious 60's.
Well worth watching.

Cheers, Robin

[richardplondon]

I saw this documentary when broadcast. In the context of the recent Time cover post here, and also of the recent Ctein print offer, it is quite comical to consider Duffy's selection of dye transfer (on David Bowie album cover artwork) on overtly economic grounds: to drive up the job's expense for the client. He clearly relished pulling out the print, though - and not just for that reason.

David Hemmings was the actor in Blow-Up, not the character. This kind of movie belongs to a bolder era where not only did characters not require a full name, but often, it was not of great concern whether the audience would even enjoy what they saw.

I was about to add, few back then cared whether what the characters were doing made any sense; then I realised - this describes the current film industry too, though for other reasons. In the 1960s films made no sense where the director was madly pursuing some vain and self-referential authorial eccentricity; today they make no sense where they are pretzelled by tie-ins and product placement, and bedevilled by timid focus-group abasement to the audience.

[Paul]

Hmmm...the link is broken. Maybe it got TOP'd.

[Scott Lane]

"the website" link tells me I don't have permission to access it. Hopefully, someone will post a workaround.

[Account Deleted]

I think you meant to say that David Bailey was the model for Thomas in Antonioni's Blow up (Thomas is the character, David Hemmings was the actor who played him).

[Mike Johnston]

"David Hemmings was the actor in Blow-Up, not the character."

Whoops, sorry, my bad. I made the change in the post. Thanks Richard.

Never saw that movie myself.

Mike

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I saw "Blow-up" when it first came out and have watched it several times since. When I first saw it, I and many others were of course found this raunchy exposure of the 60's fashion world very striking. But what was also of interest then, and increasingly so on repeated viewings, is the section, really the core of the film, where Thomas, the fashion photographer, has shot some photos of a couple in the park simply because there was something about them that caught his photographer's eye. He then subsequently enlarges and re-enlarges one of the frames(which is why the film is called Blow-up)to reveal a body lying down in the bushes. It is never clear whether this is someone who is connected to the couple, someone who is dead, murdered, or maybe just a sleeping drunk. These ideas about a photographic reality which the camera sees but the naked eye doesn't and the ambivalence inherent in the interpretation of a photograph is what will probably make this film an enduring work of art and not just a fictional document about one aspect of the 60's.

[hugh crawford]

If you haven't seen "Blow Up" or Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" I highly recommend seeing them back to back.

They might be the two best and most entertaining movies about Epistemology ever made.

[Steve Smith]

I saw the Duffy programme here in the UK a few weeks ago. I liked the fact that he wasn't pretentious enough to consider himself a great artist, rather he refered to himself as a good craftsman and his work as a job well done.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Hugh -- We were exposed to those two films together like that when I was taking film studies courses back in college. The Conversation was, we were told, made partly in reference to Blow Up, so it's not even an externally-imposed relationship.

Haven't seen either in years, but I remember both very fondly. The Kodak signature colors (not just the yellow) in Blow Up!

[Roy]

Great to see that those outside the UK can now view this documentary - once the server recovers!
I too used to buy the fashion mags - and the early LIFE mag - to see good photography back in the 60s and 70s. One of my favourites was NOVA, and I've kept the copies I bought for nearly forty years now.
The article that Duffy mentions in the film, about "How to Undress in front of your Man', I posted over on my site in mid-Jan as it is a classic. Without wishing to bomb my server as well, anyone is keen to view it is welcome to visit. Just type Duffy in the search box if you don't spot it under 'recent'.

[Tori - Photographer Newbie]

Thanks so much for posting the link to this video. While I don't have an hour to devote to watching this right now, I've definitely saved this in my bookmarks and hopefully I'll get some time tonight to watch. I never heard of the Black Trinity of British photographers but my interest is piqued now!