Photographer David Hamilton was found dead at his Paris home on November 25, 2016 at the age of 83.
A year ago, the death of the British photographer, David Hamilton, would have been hailed by all nude amateur photographers and this erotico-romantic spirit. But it was before yesterday that David Hamilton was found dead at his Paris home with, hovering over his work, the suspicions of rape including the presenter Flavie Flament. The photographer certainly committed suicide Friday night by absorbing a lethal dose of medication.
Hamilton’s style
Hamilton is above all a very particular light, the critics speak of “Hamiltonian blur” or “Hamiltonian light”. His trademark is images with pastel cracks, halo of impressionist-inspired pallor. When he began his career in 1966, he collaborated with legendary magazines like Photo, Réalités or Twen. He has long used a Minolta SRT 303 and Minolta TM Rokkor optics.
The nudes of young girls
Her work is mainly composed of photographs of adolescent girls, in lascivious or romantic positions, and, in some other works, flowers and still lifes, landscapes and portraits. He chooses his models among young girls often from the Nordic countries, blondes, elongated, very light skin, breasts that point. Some of his muses, whom he always chooses at a “maximum age of 16”, become supermodels thereafter, as Rachel Hunter or Paulina Porizkova.
He qualifies this attraction of adolescence by a quest for purity, associating himself with the works of the painter Balthus and the writer Nabokov. His choices have earned him publication bans in different countries like South Africa.
