Tributes paid to Brian Duffy
Written by admin on June 5, 2010 – 10:41 pm -Friends and family have paid tribute to celebrated photographer, Brian Duffy, who died on Monday aged 76. He had been battling lung disease.
Duffy began working as a photographer in 1957 for British Vogue. His portraits of actors, models and musicians in the next decade helped shape the image of London in the 1960s.
He was one of a trio of photographers, along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, who became known as “The Black Trinity.” Bailey is the only surviving member of the Black Trinity. He reflected on Duffy’s passing for The Sunday Telegraph:
| “I will deeply miss arguing with him. If you said “Good morning” to Duffy, he’d question it, that was his charm but I could do that Cockney thing with him of defusing it with humour.” |
| “Duffy and Donovan are the people I’ve known longest in the world, and now two of them are gone. With Duffy, it was continuous dialogue and banter. He had that Irish madness about him, he was very quick-witted, and the banter held us three together.” |
Among Duffy’s notable work was the portrait of Bowie that appeared on the “Aladdin Sane” album cover. He also photographed John Lennon, Sammy Davis Jr, Michael Caine, Paul Jones, Black Sabbath, Sidney Poitier, Debbie Harry and many more.
Duffy gave up photography in the late 1970s and became a leading restorer of Regency furniture, but did pick up the camera again earlier this year.
Giles Huxley-Parlour, the head of photography at Chris Beetles gallery, worked with Duffy curating a retrospective exhibition of his work last year. He said:
| “His photography embodied the youth culture ethic that developed in the Sixties and in fact he helped to develop it, blowing away the past of the stuffy 1950s class-ridden country, and producing a much more meritocratic art scene with predominantly working class people making it big without having to pretend to be posh. |
| “It can’t be emphasised enough how much the photography of Brian Duffy, David Bailey and Terence Donovan altered the look of 1960s England.” |
To view examples of Brian Duffy’s work, go to the Brian Duffy archive.
Tags: Aladdin Sane, Brian Duffy
Posted in Obituaries |
