John Deakin (May 8, 1912 - May 25, 1972) is an English photographer, best known for his work centered on the inner circle of Soho Francis Bacon. Bacon bases a number of famous paintings on photographs he ordered from Deakin, including Henrietta Moraes, Henrietta Moraes on Beds, and Three Lucian Freud Studies. > me.
Deakin also spent many years in Paris and Rome photographing street scenes, but his only stable period of work as a photographer were the two tasks of working for Vogue between 1947 and 1954. Deakin initially aspired to be a painter , and when his photography career faded, Deakin devoted his time to painting in the 1960s, questioning the validity and status of photography as an art form. He showed little interest in curation and publication of his own work, so many of his photographs were lost, destroyed or damaged over time.
A chronic alcoholic, Deakin died in obscurity and poverty, but since the 1980s his reputation has grown through monographs, exhibitions and catalogs.
Video John Deakin
Life and career
Beginning of life and working for Vogue
Deakin was born in Bebington in Wirral and attended the Western Kirby Grammar School. He left school at the age of sixteen, and traveled around Ireland and Spain. He returned to London in the early 1930s where he met and started dating Arthur Jeffress. They spent most of the 1930s traveling together between London, Paris and Venice. During this time Deakin started as a painter but turned to photography. While in Paris in 1939 fashion illustrator Christian BÃÆ' Â © rard introduced Deakin to Michel de Brunhoff, French editor of Vogue . From 1940 to 1945, Deakin served in the British Army Film Unit as a photographer, where he photographed the Second Battle of El Alamein.
After the War, Deakin enjoyed two periods of work as a staff photographer in the English edition of Vogue . The first period, from 1947 to 1948, ended with his dismissal when he lost some valuable photographic equipment. The second period was from 1951 to 1954, and for three years it was Deakin being the most active. She enjoys the support of Vogue editor Audrey Withers, even though she does not like fashion photography. Deakin excels in portraits of prominent figures in literature, theater, and film. The subjects included Dylan Thomas, John Huston, Luchino Visconti and many other artistic celebrities. Deakin recognizes this work as his true call when he writes:
"To be very interested in the human race, what I want to do when I take a photo is to make a statement about it so my caregiver turns into my victim, but I want to add that only those who have daemons, but small and whatever kind, whose face tends to be a victim altogether.And the only complaint I have ever had from my victims is from evil, vainies, the meanies "
Famous for his "blistering personality, bad manners and total disregard for others," Deakin was fired from Vogue for the second time in 1954, because of his drink and "the accumulation of minor incidents involving delays, a series of tripod strikes , and an inevitable argument with the fashion editor. " Vogue editor Withers made sure he paid off so well.
Life and relationship later with Francis Bacon
After being fired by Vogue for the second time, Deakin moved from one job to another and he enjoyed followers from The Observer until 1958. He spent a long time in Rome and in Paris. during the 1950s, specializing in street photography. In 1951, John Lehmann published a photograph of the Roman Deakin, Rome Alive , with a text by Christopher Kinmonth. Deakin spent years trying unsuccessfully to publish his Paris photographs, but was exhibited in 1956 at David Archer's bookstore in Soho. The catalog accompanying the exhibit was written by Elizabeth Smart, a Deakin friend. The Smart catalog includes an observation: "You definitely will not feel rested after the time at Paris John Deakin.These pictures take you by the nape of the neck and insist that you see.If you have not been to Paris, you will find it haunted when you arrive."
Archer's bookstore, also in 1956, exhibited a second show, Roma John Deakin. This is the only photography exhibition that Deakin achieved in his lifetime, and they attract a lot of critical acclaim. In The Times , Colin MacInnes reviews Paris photos: "Deakin sees one side of the glass Alice sees and the infinite mystery behind it Art critic David Sylvester writes:" Photos of Paris by John Deakin presents a very personal and very strange vision, a vision that disrupts and undermines all ideas about where the dead and lifting points take over. "
Deakin resumed painting in the mid-1950s, but with little success. Daniel Farson commented that "Deakin's artistic career has one consistency: when success comes near he turns the other way." Deakin then left paintings to create collages and sculptures in the 1960s.
Deakin, however, continued to photograph many of the main characters in the Soho art scene during the 1950s and 1960s, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Eduardo Paolozzi. Although both have difficult personal relationships, Bacon greatly appreciates Deakin's work. After Deakin's death, Bacon described him as "the best portrait photographer since Nadar and Julia Margaret Cameron." Since Bacon's "preferred photographic reference is preferred over the life model for his painting", Deakin takes many portraits on commissions for Bacon, which is then used as a source of material for some of his most famous images. One of the most prominent is the Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorn Standing in a Street in Soho, 1967 . Deakin photos George Dyer, Muriel Belcher and Henrietta Moraes are also associated with Bacon's painting of this nanny.
In February 2012, Bacon's 1963 Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, based on a Deakin photo, sold for £ 21.3 million. Photo of Deakin Lucian Freud provided one of the sources for the Bacon 1969 Drawing of Three Studies of Lucian Freud . This work was sold in 2013 for $ 142 million, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever sold. Deakin's photo of Freud also inspired a series of paintings by Jasper Johns, Jasper Johns: Regrets , which is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in 2014.
Freud and Bacon appear as two of Eight Portraits, an unpublished manuscript of photographs and writings discovered after Deakin's death. In this work, Deakin writes about Bacon: "He is a strange person, extraordinarily gentle and benevolent by nature, but with peculiar cruelty traits, especially to friends.I think that in this portrait I managed to capture something from the fear that must underlie these contradictions in his character. "
In 1972, Deakin was diagnosed with lung cancer, and underwent surgery to remove it. While recovering, he died of a heart attack while staying at the Old Ship Hotel, Brighton. At the hospital, she named Bacon as her closest relative, forcing painters to identify her body. "It was the last dirty trick he played on me," Bacon said.
Maps John Deakin
Opinions and critical inheritance
In 1979, art critic John Russell wrote that, with Deakin's death, "having lost a photographer who often equaled Bacon in his ability to create a similarity in which the truth came wrapped up and not packed... The portrait... has a dead center, not rhetorical A complete human being is set before us, without additives. "A series of exhibits revived Deakin's reputation after the obscurity of its final years. In 1984, Victoria & amp; Albert Museum put on the exhibition John Deakin: The Salvage of a Photographer . In 1996, the National Portrait Gallery, London, presenting John Deakin Photographs . An exhibition, John Deakin: Tattoo Portraits was staged at Liverpool in 1999.
Daniel Farson writes of his portraits: "I am sure he will be seen as one of the most feared photographers of this century.The expressions of his victims seem unfortunate because Deakin does not have time to enjoy such" cheeses "and the effect is enlarged by the big contrast blow-ups with every eyeball, blemish, and eyeball exposed to blood, in this way, it combines instant horror of a passport photo with its own shock value. "
Robin Muir has summed up his legacy: "The portrait still looks very modern, half century.His street photo also haunts the document, a single vision of three major cities.After two major retrospections at the London institute, the Victoria & Albert Museum (1984) and the National Portrait Gallery ( 1996), and an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, her place in the twentieth-century British photographer may be secured. "Bruce Bernard writes, in Deakin's first retrospective, that he is proud of" having a role in making friends good, intelligent, and obedient, some justice he strongly rejects himself. "
Deakin is the basis for photographer Carl Castering in the novel Colin Wilson Ritual in the Dark . Deakin is played by actor Karl Johnson in the biography of John Maybury about Francis Bacon, Love Is the Devil: Studies for Francis Bacon's Images .
References
Note
Source
- Deakin, John (1996). Photos: Selected by essay by Robin Muir . The Vendome Press. ISBNÃ, 0-86565-988-5.
- Farson, Daniel (1987). Soho in Fifties . Pimlico. ISBNÃ, 0-7126-5724-X.
- Muir, Robin (2002). Maverick Eyes: Street Photography John Deakin . Thames & amp; Hudson. ISBN: 0-500-54244-9.
- Russell, John (1979). Francis Bacon (World of Art) . Norton. ISBN: 0-500-20169-2.
Further reading
- Farson, Daniel. Sacred Monster . London: Bloomsbury, 1988. ISBNÃ, 0-7475-0254-4
- Peppiatt, Michael. Francis Bacon: Anatomy of Enigma . London: Weidenfeld & amp; Nicolson, 1996. ISBNÃ, 0-297-81616-0
External links
- John Deakin's Archive
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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