Robert Freeman (photographer)

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Robert Grahame Freeman (*  5. December 1936 in London , †  6. November 2019 ibid ) was a British photographer and graphic designer . He was known for his diverse portraits of the Beatles , which were also used for numerous record covers.

life and work

John Coltrane 1963

Robert Freeman's parents were insurance broker Freddy Freeman and his wife Dorothy, nee Rumble. During the Second World War , Robert Freeman was evacuated to Yorkshire for a year . He later attended Clare College at the University of Cambridge , where he studied Modern Languages and graduated in 1959. While working for the student newspaper, he developed an interest in photography . In the early 1960s he worked for the Sunday Times and other magazines .

Brian Epstein 1965

Freeman's black and white photographs of jazz - musician John Coltrane excited the interest of the 1963 Beatles manager Brian Epstein . Epstein commissioned Freeman on August 22, 1963 at the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth , where the Beatles were staying at that time, to make recordings of the group for the album With the Beatles . Freeman photographed the band in a dark hotel hallway. The only lighting consisted of a natural light source that illuminated the scene as grazing light from the side.

At the end of 1963, Freeman was hired as a photographer for the first edition of the Pirelli calendar from the tire company of the same name. During these photos he met Sonny Spielhagen , who came from Berlin and worked as a photo model . A short time later, the two married. This marriage resulted in a daughter and a son, Janine and Dean Freeman. In the early 1970s, Freeman divorced his wife. She later married John Drane and took his last name.

In 1964, Freeman designed the cover of John Lennon's short story collection In His Own Write . For the cover of the Beatles album A Hard Day's Night , he made numerous individual portraits of the band members. Then he selected five recordings from each musician and arranged them in four rows. Freeman then accompanied the Beatles on their tour of the United States . Freeman also contributed the cover photo for the Beatles LP Beatles for Sale , which was released that same year . He used a color photograph of the group in autumn light, which he had taken on October 24, 1964 in London's Hyde Park .

Beatles 1965

The following year Freeman photographed the Beatles for the cover of the album Help! . To do this, he let the band members represent a word in winker alphabet . Initially, the letters were supposed to result in the word HELP, which was discarded because it didn't look good enough. The arm positions were then improvised in order to get a more appealing composition. Freeman also designed the title sequences for the accompanying film .

In 1965 Freeman designed the album cover for the Beatles LP Rubber Soul . After the photo session, which had taken place at John Lennon's estate in Weybridge , Freeman projected the slides of the recordings onto a cardboard box that was to represent the album cover. When the box was tilted backwards, a fisheye lens version of the depicted people emerged. The band members asked whether this distortion could also be reproduced photographically. After Freeman said yes, the distorted version of Freeman was reproduced and used for the album cover.

In 1966, Freeman was supposed to design the album cover for the Beatles LP Revolver , but his design was rejected. Freeman later worked in television commercials and directed the feature films The Touchables (1968) and Secret World (1969), both of which fell through critics. He portrayed Sophia Loren , Charlton Heston , Muhammad Ali , Andy Warhol and Jimmy Cliff .

He lived in Hong Kong for several years with his second wife, the author Tiddy Rowan . He had a daughter with her, Holly Freeman. In the Far East he dealt with landscape photography and founded a production company for advertising with his wife . He later divorced her. In the mid-1990s, Freeman moved to Spain , where he befriended director Pedro Almodóvar and took photos of him and Penélope Cruz . He now sold his photos privately.

After suffering a stroke , Freeman returned to London, where he died in 2019 at the age of 82. According to his former wife Tiddy Rowan was the cause of death a pneumonia .

Works (selection)

Album cover

Feature films

Documentation

  • 1969: Director: Mini-midi

Non-fiction

  • Robert Freeman: Yesterday: The Beatles 1963-1965. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1983, ISBN 0030640334 .
  • Robert Freeman: Yesterday: Photographs of the Beatles. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1983, ISBN 0297783262 .
  • Robert Freeman: The Beatles: A Private View. Barnes & Noble, New York 2003, ISBN 1592261760 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Freeman, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Freeman, Robert Grahame
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British photographer and graphic designer
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 2019
Place of death London