London photographer
Jane B from Eye For I Agency in Milano, late 1991 (I guess October). This was a paid test, something I barely have done in my career, I regarded them mostly as a waste of time, barely able to get anything useful for myself.
Jane B. and Sarah (to be posted soon) were quite an exception.
Shot in Piazza Sempione in the centre of Milano. Eye For I agency (now defunct) wanted me to test a load of their girls, Jane was one of them. Really easy shoot with lovely Autumn sunlight, perfect combo.
Kay was with Marcella Studio, a model agency in Milano. I shot this in 1990 in my hotel room, a dive in the centre of Milano called the pensione Dante. You shared rooms with total strangers, the fat family a few doors down ended up using all the hot water, shared bathroom of course. The Moroccan co-owner used to spy through someone’s room into the shower room. I kid you not! Models, hair and make-up crew and photographers frequented through this place like mad. The pensione Dante is long gone and that is rightly so.
I have been scanning in a lot and will be scanning for yonks to come.
Kay in Milano 1990 with a 2015 twist. I love film!
I took this in 1998 in Finsbury Park as part of a spread called The Beauty Truth for 2nd Generation Magazine, a magazine with a lot of potential but sadly folded after 3 years. I think it happened before The Millennium.
Taken with Ektachrome 200 (EPD) then processed in C41 (for those that don’t know: it’s putting a positive film in a negative processor so instead of getting a slide transparency you get a negative instead). Fab contrast and colour ratio no other slide film comes out that well after cross processing.
I still have a few rolls in my freezer…….waiting for the right project……
Hair: Guy Pranzili
Make-up: Cynthia Balligan
Model: Gillian Wong / Select Models
Some shots I took three years ago in The Netherlands and in Stoke Newington. Since it is Spring I thought I’d post a few wintry landscape photographs.
Moody as always.
Taken in Parco di Monza, just north of Milano in 1992.
Linda in Blumarine.
Shot a very long time ago, I think it was 1991, Chantal who was back then with De Boekers.
Wearing Azzedine Alaia, and taken in the old city of Bergamo, Italy.
Time for a break the missus reckoned and sunshine beckoned. So of we went to The Canaries, this time Lanzarote.
Quite windy and cloudy but plenty of sunshine in the afternoon, went to shoot at Cuava de Los Verdes (bit overpriced if you ask me) and the Cactus Garden and took some close-ups while blurring with the zoom as the shutter speed hinged around 1/30, some pleasing results, then we ended our holiday with a climb up Montaña Roja, which gives a spectacular view over the whole area.
Some pix:
All photos in this post: copyright: Bartolomy, all rights reserved!
The Seattle metal outfit Sanctuary graced London a visit before embarking on a mainland Europe tour with Overkill. I shot Sanctuary back in the 80’s when they played Aardschok Festival in 1988. where Megadeth was the headliner.
I only found out by chance that they were coming down a fortnight ago, and after nabbing their album, which is very good btw, I booked a couple of tickets as I was keen to see them perform live, you never know how long this lot is going to be around :-)
Roughly 100/150 people came down to The Underworld in Camden, which made it easier to position yourself wherever you liked.
The band played 6 tracks of the new album ‘The Year The Sun Died’ and of course plenty of songs from ‘Refuge Denied’ and ‘Into The Mirror Black’, which the crowd loved of course. The new material sounds great live and new touring guitar player Nick Cordle (ex-Arch Enemy) fits in all right, although he looks at least ten years younger than the rest of the band. His and Lenny Rutledge’s solos were like a nasty slap in the face, I loved it. Some peeps are keen to compare Sanctuary to Nevermore, what they tend to forget is that there would be no Nevermore without Sanctuary. Secondly there is no shredding, instead pure old skool Judas Priest style heavy riffs.
Warrel Dane’s voice was better than I thought it was going to be, the high pitched vocals were there, although lacking in strength here and there, and this became obvious during the song ‘Sanctuary’, as this is the first date of the tour one wonders whether his voice will grow stronger or weaker during this European endeavor. Time will tell, but I am glad I saw them.
Taken on a cold wintry evening on my way back from a museum visit.
Taken in the early 90’s in Varenna, Italy. A village in the Alps where I have been to about 4 or 5 times to do shoots. It has an old ruined castle on top of the mountain with a wicked view of the Iseo and Como lakes. The beauty of Varenna was that it was about an hour on the train from Milan and the weather proved to be much better there than in the city, mountains are funny things when it comes to the weather. The last time I went there was in 1993, I wouldn’t mind going back one day, not sure if the ruins are still accessible? I will try and dig out other shots taken there and post them at some point.
Becky was with EyeForI model agency in Milano and needed fresh pix, so I took her along while doing another shoot for a mag and used the great Italian Autumn sun to light her up.
One from my archive a few years ago for Bacardi Breezer using Religion Clothing.
All taken on film, au natural :-)
Bettine McCabe.
And here is Ruari.
Simone Bovair.
A couple of pix from this week’s visit to The Netherlands.
The shot on top was taken at Almelo station early in the morning at the very end of the platform there is an old fashioned waiting room, where somebody had the idea to decorate it minty green.
Makes an interesting shot.
And below that moment when you get from a fully overcast weather environment to a sunny one, ah yes…….
Anna Thornqvist wearing Blumarine shot in 1992 at Lake Como, talk about blast from the past.
Taken near a very nice villa at Lake Como, and that’s Villa D’Este in the background. I have more shots of this shoot which I need to dig out, once I do shall I add them to this post.
Just happen to read an interview about Terry O’Neill on the Treats Magazine website (I go there for the interviews honestly……)
I like Terry’s work, some fab images he has made that have stood the test of time, may he sell loads of prints!
One part of the interview stood out, after which I could only exclaim ”EXACTLY”
Here’s a copy and paste of that part from Harvey Kubernik’s interview with Terry O’Neill:
Access to celebrities today isn’t what it used to be. How has this affected your work?
Yes. You can’t spend time around them when they’re working, which is the most interesting pictures of all. You can’t take off-beat shots of today’s celebrities because of the PRs. The publicists destroyed the type of photography that I do. They forced every star into not letting photographers into their lives, or give them any time. They don’t strike up working relationships with them. It’s awful, really. It’s gonna cause a huge rift in the photographic history of Hollywood for a start. I mean, it’s just gone now. The publicists want approval of everything. The words, the pictures…it’s a joke. If you want to photograph anyone today who is famous you have to do it in a studio or in a hotel room, and the PR stipulates which shots you can release. It has impacted my journey. Absolutely.
That’s precisely the reason I don’t do celebs (personally I don’t care much for the culture around it) and some of the people that hang around them (and that’s what they do hang around…) aren’t very nice people at all and could ruin the making of a great image completely.
The best PRs? Simple. The ones that say you got 20/30 minutes don’t walk off to far and be back in time. Great way to get the job done and everyone goes home happy and the results will be way better.
Here is a shot of Chrissy from Nevs models, from way way back, 2006 if I am not mistaken, at The Cadogan Hotel in Chelsea.
A rather petite hotel where it was not very easy to do a shoot in. This was for a magazine in the Middle-East, the name escaped me.
Styling by Rebekah Roy.
Today I happen to receive the 31st AOP Photography Awards 2014 book, each year all members are invited to submit their best work for it to be considered and get honoured for what they have done. Back in the day there were Gold/Silver/Bronze Awards, now you get Best In Category as an accolade.
In the ten years or so that I have been a member of the Association Of Photographers I submitted my work 3x, and it did not go much further than their bin, I just don’t fit in or my work is just shit, I think it is both, end of that debate. So spare yourself the thoughts that I think I am sooooo fucking great…..
The book this time, is not a hard cover but more a magazine style of work with a sleeve jacket, the paper inside is fab, I have to say it makes the pix look great, but that is hardly a plus compared to a hard cover book. The AOP has been plagued a few years back with mismanagement and loss of a lot of money which forced them to sell up their base in Drummond St. and now reside inside Holborn Studios. which in the end is not a bad thing, I am glad they got themselves sorted.
What I totally hate about the book is the fact that certain photographers have submitted 4 images and someone took the decision to only post 3 images of it, why?
I also find the Photoshop overkill on some of the images quite off putting as well, there ought to be a non-photoshop category, and why not a film (that’s photographic emulsion) category as well.
A lot of the work is so similar that I wonder where the distinction of that particular photograph lies, not as terrible as the usual Fashion Porn (no artistic merit, white backdrop, flat lighting, as much detail as possible, not that any brain cares to spend time to process all that data, anyone actually gave that a thought or two? ) but a very good second, and get the same feel every Awards year: ‘Could have been done by anyone…..springs to mind’
My fave pix:
Gary Salter in Non-Commissioned Life Single
Carol Sharp in Non-Commissioned Objects Single
Noel McLaughlin in Project
Adam Hinton in Project
Emma Townsend in Assistant Award Series
Also the missus and I went to Somerset House again, the Guy Bourdin exhibit took so much time that I could not view the Chris Stein exhibit of Blondie pictures, the majority from the 70’s. It was held in the same rooms as the Erwin Blumenfeld show earlier last year (which was fab btw). As a body of work I really liked it, sure it’s an advantage to be in the band and your missus happens to be the lead singer, still it takes a long time, and loads of perseverance to maintain it. Glad I saw it.
And while I was there I slipped into the Bryan Adams exhibit as well, Wounded The Legacy Of War.
Now I have a massive grudge against people that start a photography career after they have become famous for something else. If they were actually great then that would be fine by me, but in 99% that seems to be not the case and use the previous career as a stepping stone to get to a level some of us ‘real’ photographers could only dream off! It’s not cheating as a major US fashion photographer did over 20 years ago, but it’s a great second. Johnny Depp seems to think along that way as well.
This exhibit could have been so much better than just being set in a Fashion Porn environment, why not make it look that war is horrible and slap the viewer in the face with that awful reality than rather in that Ebay advert setting.
I am not only shit, but fucking jealous too………
Finally, let me try and end this rant on a positive note, the nominations for the Zilveren Camera have been selected, and the material is very impressive, there are some fantastic images to be looked at.
Glad I got all this off my chest, I feel so much better now.
Shot near Morden.
Published for Archant Magazines a few years back, got the cover too. Also added some outtakes.
I remember we had to hide under the trees as we got caught out by a heavy shower.
Styling: Jackie Beeke.
Hair and make-up: Charlotte Fisher.
Model: Kate Alexis.
This week I went to the Guy Bourdin exhibition at Somerset House, it started on Nov 25th and runs for a few months.
It was held in a section at Somerset House I had not seen an exhibition before, not that I am a frequent visitor, I average 2 a year.
I am a big admirer of Guy Bourdin’s work, not just because of the angles and compositions he used, but even more for his uncompromising attitude towards his crew and clients regarding his overall delivery of the final image(s). In short his will was King and not many people managed to have him change his mind regarding the final image.
The work he did for Charles Jourdan was displayed in a long corridor, and tastefully lit. Moving images were shown in three sections with projection, and then there was his own art work (drawings and paintings)where it shows that he planned his images carefully. His b&w work was strong in contrast, which would be way too much for the current fashion mags stable, yet two spreads from the mid 70’s for French and British Vogue stood the test of time, due to its cinematic and above all timeless influence, classic shots indeed.
What I did miss was his work for French Harpers Bazaar and The Best magazine which concluded his career, certainly not his most ground breaking work, but I see no reason why it was not shown.
There was talk that his material was collected in 30 odd garbage bags and meant to be destroyed after his death, whether this is true or not who knows, assuming that it is one could only wonder what he might have thought of this retrospective at Somerset House. I recommend everyone who is into great fashion photography to splash out £9.00 and see it and marvel at the fantastic work Guy Bourdin produced.
The world definitely got more boring after he left this planet.
I attach a few pix I shot with my iPhone, but also an article I managed to dig up from American Photographer (later re-branded as American Photo) from 1989 with a fantastic portrait by Chip Simons.
The band is back in the EU and since I missed out on their massive Summer tour I wanted to hang out for a week and shoot some.
They arrive late on a Sunday and therefore are forced to cancel their show in Manchester so their first show is at The Shacklewell Arms in London, a good show and former bassist Lachlan Anderson is in the crowd, too bad there was no little jolly up. One more note for the owners at The Shacklewell Arms: please get rid of that stupid arch on the stage!
Die! Die! Die! play well, especially the songs from SWIM sound great, but I miss a certain oompf and wonder whether Lord Wilson has lost his edge.
This is being thoroughly discussed the next day in the van on our way to Tilburg in the Netherlands. During our journey we are stuck in Belgian traffic for 6 hours (averaging 10 mph). Lord Wilson gets the hint and goes for it and so do Mikey Prain and Michael Logie, a very good show. The next day in Lille it gets even better, where the crowd is mad for it in a sweaty basement club called El Diablo, wicked show. My fave.
We head up to the north of The Netherlands to Groningen where they play another good show, slight changes are made to the set, shifting songs, all for the better. In Leuven (a very pretty city to the East of Brussels) they introduce ‘We Built Our Own Oppressors’ which goes down extremely well and gives Lord Wilson another ‘excuse’ to rummage through the crowd once more…..
Bruges, at Club Cactus, the next day has the best stage and lighting for me and next door in a bigger auditorium I take a few minutes to photograph the band.
The gig itself is ok, Andrew keeps being touched up by a 40 year old woman, rather bizarre…..
I post a few pix, and I am going to put a 2nd book together. It will be released next year.
The first book on Die! Die Die! can be ordered here.
This is a polaroid transfer of AnneMarie Prince and was taken in 1993 in Den-Bosch. I cross processed the negative as a slide film (that is c41 film developed as e6) and that gave it this large green tint. I shortly after found out which film to use and what filtering to counteract that.
I then grabbed this slide and put it into a colour enlarger and exposed it on a polaroid back, then processed it (it must have been Polaroid 669), but peeled off the negative after just 15 seconds of processing and mounted it to some white board ( used for mounting prints inside frames) and then used a rubber roller carefully to transfix the image on the board.
This is the only attempt that worked, as the negative tended to ‘slip’ while rolling therefore blurring the end result, hence this being precious, here is the digital scan. I have a load of slides of this shoot which I will scan in at some point and publish. I remember meeting Annemarie in Milano a year or so before this shoot. Lovely person to work with.
Model: AnneMarie Prince
Hair and make-up: Karin Melissant.
Taken a while back at The Farnborough Air Show and stacked on top of each other, just playin’
I am going on tour with Lord Wilson next week, so expect a load of Die! Die! Die! antics shortly.
Also dropped my scanner off again at Nikon for a bi-annual clean-up / repair and I hope I can resume scanning my archive after that.
And last but not least I am working on building a new website, had a dabble these past few days already and I hope to have something to show around the holidays.
Short near Liverpool St station in 1996.
Here are outtakes from a shoot I did at what is now called The Rosewood Hotel in Holborn.
Model: Gerda Marie Mare
Styling: Cora Chung
Make-up: Shelly Manser-Cavanaugh
Hair: Claudio Contrasti
Been away for a week to Syracuse in Sicily, solid 28 degrees the first 5 days and only a degree or two lower in the latter part of last week. Experienced a lot of blanket lightning, hours of it, spectacular to say the least.
On our way to Syracusa, we passed though Chiaramonte Gulfi and Palazzolo Acreide, the latter giving you an amazing view of Sicily, well worth stopping for.
During the week we also managed to go to Notto, if Baroque architecture is your thing then this is a great place to be.
The beach near Lido di Notto, named Eloro is a quiet and sandy one.
Ortigia itself a lovely place to stay in, quiet, great market, some very good restaurants.
La vita et bella!
Took a lot of pictures
All photographs copyright Bartolomy, all rights reserved.
No public reproduction of any kind allowed!
It has been a few months since I have been posting here, and besides using my iPhone on Instagram it doesn’t amount to much.
In the mean time, time allowing, some changes to a new website and photographs will be done as well and especially the metal stuff, I have made a load of scans but there is so much more to do.
Then the design museum portraits, I have worked on a lot of them a while back and they will be published shortly. Over the 4 year period that I made those portraits the technique has grown so the older shots deserve another ‘look’.
The Kiss is still ongoing, but I take them more with my iPhone than with my Nikon gear, here’s one I shot last week in Shoreditch.
And a nice rainbow shot last night while dangling outside my bedroom window. 
First to arrive Poppy J., amazing model, strong features and great personality.
Next was Sienna S. from Derbyshire. Fabulous hair and looks.
And finally Nancy.
Her first shoot and she did very well.
All at Profile Models.
Last Sunday I went back into the studio again, it had been just over 8 months. Managed to photograph three young girls from Profile Models.
First one who popped round was Charlotte W., with her mom Sue. I must admit I felt a bit rusty at first but once I had things set up it all went very smoothly. I changed sets and lighting around to make it a bit more interesting and get a bit of variation in moods.
This was Charlotte’s very first photo shoot and by taking that into account I have to say that she did extremely well. Here are a few.
Next was Lola P., discovered a few years ago on the street when she was twelve ,now with Profile Models and her mom is a photographer too and it shows as she is at ease in front of the lens.
And finally Rosanna, where I managed to get one of my personal favorite photographs. She did great, for it being her second ever shoot.
All three girls have major potential to further their modelling career and I wish them the very best of luck with that!
Thanks girls!
Shot in 2011 for Spindle Magazine.
Watched a few more: Best Man Down, a nice little movie, nothing too complicated part serious part funny.
Woody Allen’s latest film Blue Jasmine is very good, so good that I did not even see it as a typical W.A. flick. Kate Blanchett does a very solid job in this one, would have liked to see Alec Baldwin a bit more since he is such a degenerate in this flick.
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty Ben Stiller’s latest, very good film too,according to my g/f it has a Forest Gump vibe to it, if Tom Hanks were 20 years younger I bet he would be doing this. Well worth watching.
And then there is Steve McQueen’s latest film 12 Years A Slave an excellent film indeed, curious how it will do at the Oscars, and if it gets neglected in Hollywood it surely will clean up at the Baftas, as it surely deserves a few prizes. Best film of 2013 for me. Strange thing, in this film, is that both parties, the whites and the blacks are worshiping the same God, can’t think of anything more fucked up if you ask me. Some God to worship……
Dallas Buyers Club has a very thin Matthew McConaughey starring as someone who parties hard and who becomes HIV positive and gets himself involved in all kinds of research and tries to obtain all types of drugs just to stay alive, a good film and well played by him but I think Jared Leto is as good if not better, but no way will they give him the Oscar.
And I know I am late to this one: Lilyhammer starring Steven Van Zandt a mafioso (as what else?) relocating thru the witness protection program to Norway, just watched the first ep, I hope it stays as strong as this opener.
Finally Enough Said featuring the late James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus again a nice little comedy, well worth watching.
The missus and I decided to go to Malta for a quick break, as it was her birthday and we wanted to go somewhere warmer than the U.K. just to break that wintry and above all wet U.K. spell.We got ourselves based in Mellieha which is the north of the island, where it was relatively quiet. Malta itself is not very big and this messes with your head a tad as when you drive around and look at the map you expect places to be a bit further apart, but every 2 or 3 miles you are in the next town or village.
We hired a car a few days and also took the bus to some major places like Valletta and the Three Cities, the bus system is really excellent, for about £ 1.20 you can travel around for the entire day. They are punctual and tidy, to some people who read this this may be the norm, but not in London ;) The quality of the roads overall is terrible, it makes Kingsland Rd look like the green on a pool table.
There is quite a lot to see in Malta, but you will have to arrive early as a lot of sights are closed for the afternoon, which is a bit frustrating for us northerners, as these southerners have a different way of life, the siesta continues even in winter!
Our personal fave was Gozo, the smaller island next to Malta, its look is just tidier and also its coolness factor, you just want Malta to be like that.
On our last eve we saw the moon rise, from the horizon, something I have not seen before, magical.
Special thanks to Dan Perry for providing great info as to where to go and what to do while being there!
Some pictures of our travels.
All photographs copyright Bartolomy, all rights reserved.
No public reproduction of any kind allowed!