Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson
Norman Parkinson (1913-1990)
was a portrait and fashion photographer who created the age of the supermodel
and photographed Celebrities, artists Presidents and Prime Ministers. He even photographed
the Royal Family in both public and private. Other people he has photographed
include, Audrey Hepburn, The Beetles, Twiggy and David Bowie. Parkinson also
worked for companies like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar as well as other international magazines,
which brought him worldwide recognition. He has been involved in many
exhibitions including, ‘The
Age of Innocence: Norman Parkinson's Photographs, Dimbola Lodge, Isle of Wight’
and ‘The Norman Parkinson Archive at Photo
London, Somerset House’. Parkinson
has been awarded as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society,
received a CBE and is part of a large exhibition at the National Portrait
Gallery, London.
Adele Collins
This
photograph is a portrait of Adele Collns wearing a bold red hat by Otto Lucas.
It was photographed for Vogue magazine in 1959. It was inspired by the
painting, ‘The Corn Poppy’ by Kees van Dongen which features a
female with a bright red lip, thick eye makeup and cropped hair.
Norman Parkinson’s photography has
an ‘easy and casual elegance’. My favourite photographs of his are the ones
that have elements out of focus in. I think this is a really good technique to
convey movement and to highlight certain features of the photograph, such as
the woman with the bus moving behind her. In this photograph of Adele Collins,
however, the woman in the foreground is out of focus. This is unusually are the
background is normally blurred to emphasise the foreground and the person is
most commonly the centre focus. I really like this idea as it defies all the
‘normal’ and ‘expected’ rules in photography. This photograph is very
successful as the blur (which would normally show the inferior information) is
overpowered by the lack of tones and therefore the boldness of the three blocks
of colour: red; navy blue and beige.