Innocence or inappropriateness? the photography of david hamilton

David Hamilton 15 April — 25 November was a British photographer and film director best known for his photography of young women and girls, mostly nude.

As much of Hamilton's work depicts early-teen girls, often nude, he has been the subject of some controversy and even child pornography allegations, mostly from North America and Britain, .

Hamilton was born in and grew up in London. His schooling was interrupted by World War II. As an evacuee , he spent some time in the countryside of Dorset , which inspired some of his work. His artistic skills began to emerge during a job at an architect's office. At age 20, he went to Paris, where he worked as a graphic designer for Peter Knapp of Elle magazine.

The Photography of David Hamilton MutualArt 18/12/ The controversial work of the British photographer has long been part of the “art or pornography?” debate, a question to which .

After becoming known and successful, he was hired away from Elle by Queen magazine in London as an art director. Hamilton soon realised his love for Paris, however, and after returning there, he became the art director of Printemps , the city's largest department store. By the end of the s, all of Hamilton's photographs appeared to have been snapped as if through a hazy mist.

His further successes included dozens of photographic books with combined sales well into the millions; five feature films; countless magazine displays and museum and gallery exhibitions. His work was exhibited in every one of the first three years of The Photographers' Gallery , London, but was roundly condemned by photojournalist Euan Duff for its "cliched pictorial symbolism, exploiting soft focus, pastel colours, country landscapes and old houses, old fashioned clothes and even white doves to give a phoney impression of heaIthy-food ad naturalness; they are a sort of wholemeal stoneground pornography," exhibited "because the gallery needs the money.

In December , Images Gallery — a studio owned by Bob Persky [ 6 ] at 11 East 57th Street in Manhattan — showed his photographs at the same time that Bilitis [ 7 ] was released. Hamilton has said that his work looks for "the candor of a lost paradise". In his book, Contemporary Photographers , curator Christian Caujolle wrote that Hamilton worked only with two fixed devices: "a clear pictorial intention and a latent eroticism, ostensibly romantic, but asking for trouble".

In , Hamilton said that people "have made contradictions of nudity and purity, sensuality and innocence, grace and spontaneity.