Fine Art Photography
Series
Cecil Beaton
Portrait Photographer for Vogue,
Harpers Bazaar.
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Fine Art Photography
Series
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Cecil Beaton. |
Cecil Beaton (1904-80)Contents • Cecil Beaton's
Photography For more about the early inventions upon which Beaton's lens-based art is founded, see: History of Photography (c.1800-1900). |
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GLOSSARY CAMERA ARTISTS |
Ranked among the greatest photographers in England, Cecil Beaton was important for the elegance and decorative style of his celebrity portrait art, although he was also regarded as the doyen of British fashion photography. His contribution to fine art photography spanned more than half a century, during which time he photographed a host of world leaders, royalty, film stars, international artists, and other VIPs. Elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1965, and knighted in 1972, he is also noted for his stage and costume design for films and the theatre, which won him 2 Oscars, as well as his painting and writings. Today he is regarded as one of England's best portrait artists and a key contributor to modern art as captured on film.
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Important photo: Audrey Hepburn (1964) Photographed by Cecil Beaton. Born in Hampstead, London, Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton is educated at Heath Mount School (along with Evelyn Waugh who bullies him) and at St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne (along with George Orwell). He learns the rudiments of camera work and photographic printing from his nanny, and at 11 receives his first camera - a Kodak 3A folding camera. (Note: during his career, he will use both large format cameras, and smaller Rolleiflex cameras, without ever excelling as a camera technician.) Fired with enthusiasm, Beaton becomes a prolific photographer. In 1922 he begins a degree course in history, fine art and architecture at St John's College, Cambridge, but spends much of his time doing caricature art, working in the theatre and taking photographs. In 1925 he abandons his studies and becomes part of the young art scene in London. Amazingly, his first one-man exhibition of photography, held at the Cooling Galleries in London, proves to be an extraordinary success and leads to a lucrative contract as a staff photographer with Conde Nast Publications, publishers of Vogue magazine. This establishes him as a leading portrait photographer, and he gradually develops a zest for arty, stylized, staged portraits, inspired by great American camera artists such as Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). In 1929 he is the only Englishman to participate in the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart. In 1933 he travels to Paris - still the centre of art - where he meets the writer Jean Cocteau, as well as members of the Ecole de Paris. He also takes a trip to North Africa with the fashion photographer Baron George Hoyningen-Huene (1900-68). From 1935 he does regular set design and costume design work for the theatre, while producing (from 1937) numerous portraits of the English aristocracy. During the 1930s - in both England and America - he continues to develop and refine his unique style of portraiture in which the subject is merely one element within the overall composition - which now also includes costume, background and pose. The results are surreal, sumptuous, whimsical, exotic or plain bizarre, but always chic. A copious number of these portraits appear in his photographic books: The Book of Beauty (1930), Persona Grata (1953) and It Gives Me Great Pleasure (1955). In 1938, while in America, his indiscreet anti-Semitic statements lead to his dismissal from Vogue (who re-hires him in 1940). In 1939 he photographs Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother and is hired by the Ministry of Information as a war photographer. In 1940 he documents historic London buildings destroyed in bombing raids. In 1942 he works as an RAF cameraman in the Middle East, and in 1944 he visits war zones in India and China. After the war Beaton resumes his career as a portrait photographer, but his style becomes noticeably less flamboyant, clearer and more direct. He also resumes his costume and set design work for the theatre. In 1953 he takes the official coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. (For a younger British photographer just starting to take portraits of Churchill and Hemingway, see Larry Burrows 1926-71.) In 1955 he designs the costumes for Lerner and Loewe's musical My Fair Lady. In 1956 he moves to Harper's Bazaar magazine, for whom he photographs big-screen celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Joan Crawford. In 1958 he wins an Oscar for his designs on the film Gigi. During the 1960s, he photographs numerous iconic pop culture and musical celebrities, like Twiggy, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. In 1964 he wins an Oscar for his designs for the film version of My Fair Lady. During the 60s Beaton exerts considerable influence over David Bailey (b.1938). In 1971, in collaboration with Gail Buckland, he writes "The Magic Image" - a history of photography. In 1979, he travels to Paris on assignment for Vogue magazine. He dies in January 1980, aged 76. Here is a selected list of Beaton's one-man shows. 1927 London (Cooling Galleries) Here is a short selected list of his many photographic portraits. Portraits of Royalty Portraits of Politicians Portraits of Film Stars Portraits of Artists High Society Portraits
For other renowned camera artists best-known for their portraits, please see the following forthcoming articles. • Julia
Margaret Cameron (1815-79) For other artists best-known for their fashion photography in glossy women's magazines, including the likes of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair and so on, who would have known Beaton's work, please see the following forthcoming articles. • Irving
Penn (1917-2009) |
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• For another type of camera-based
artform, see: Animation Art.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHOTOGRAPHIC ART |
