John Hedgecoe
John Hedgecoe (born March 24, 1932 in Brentford , West London, England, † June 3, 2010 ) was a British photographer, professor of photography at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and author of photographic non-fiction.
Live and act
Origin and professional career
John Hedgecoe's father, William, was a bank clerk in Asia and served as a firefighter in London during World War II. During this time John was evacuated to an aunt in Gulval , a village near Penzance in southeast Cornwall, and attended the local school there. On his 14th birthday, John received his first camera from his father and subsequently set up a darkroom in the garage of his parents' house.
Hedgecoe did his military service with the Royal Air Force (RAF) , where he was commissioned to take aerial photographs and document the destruction caused by aerial bombs during the war. In 1957, Hedgecoe enrolled at the Guildford School of Art . In the same year Hedgecoe began his work on photo magazines such as Amateur Photographer and Queen, later selling Sunday Times and Observer , among others , covering a wide range of photographic subjects such as architecture, landscape, fashion and portraiture. His portraits of British personalities became particularly well known. Until the mid-1960s, Hedgecoe photographed, among others, the former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill , the painter Francis Bacon and the artists David Hockney , John Betjeman and Peter Blake . His photographs by the English sculptor Henry Moore proved to be particularly successful , with Hedgecoe showing the artist while he was working in his studio and surrounded by his sculptures and work materials. The series of images was presented in numerous exhibitions and led to several book publications about Moore.
In 1965 Hedgecoe followed the call of the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London . He built up a chair for photography there, where he took over a professorship from 1975. In 1976 he published his first theoretical book on photography and photo techniques (The Book of Photography), which differed from many other photo textbooks of the time due to the numerous printed photographs. During his lifetime, Hedgecoe published more than 30 other textbooks on photography, with a total circulation of over nine million.
The "Machin Brand"
In 1966 Hedgecoe was commissioned to take a profile picture of Queen Elizabeth II, which the sculptor Arnold Machin (1911–1999) used as a template for a relief, which Hedgecoe photographed against a black background. This photo served as a template for a stamp motif that became almost ubiquitous in the English-speaking world as the "machin stamp". With more than 200 billion copies on postage stamps from England and the Commonwealth , Hedgecoe's image is considered the most frequently replicated photo in the world. Hedgecoe was not allowed to collaborate on the picture until the turn of the millennium, after winning a legal battle with the Royal Mail . This initially wrongly named the English photographer Lord Snowdon as the originator. In 2007, on the 40th anniversary of the first publication, Hedgecoe's contribution to the work was recognized on a first day cover by being named as the photographer of the illustration.
Photographic non-fiction books
- Photo manual, technology equipment picture design. Book Club Ex Libris, Zurich, 1985.
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hedgecoe, John |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British photographer, professor and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 24, 1932 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brentford , West London, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 3, 2010 |