John Blakemore
Tulipa - Celebrations, 1994
Gelatin Silver Print
40.3 x 48.6 cms
15 13/16 x 19 2/16 ins
11656
Titled in ink bottom left, signed in ink bottom right One of Britain's most respected photographers, John Blakemore is especially known for his photographs of nature. He was born in...
Titled in ink bottom left, signed in ink bottom right
One of Britain's most respected photographers, John Blakemore is especially known for his photographs of nature. He was born in Coventry in 1936. In the 1950s he travelled to Libya with the Royal Air Force whilst on National Service, and it was during this time he discovered photography. Further inspiration came from Edward Steichen's The Family of Man. He evolved his personal work to become one of England's leading landscape photographers. He worked in diverse areas of photography from documentary, through portraiture to still life, with a particular focus in more recent years on tulips as symbols of sensuality and elegance.
Blakemore is celebrated for his brilliance as a printer and for the detail, texture and tonal richness of his work. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Photography at the University of Derby, where he taught from 1970 to 2001.
Blakemore's work has been exhibited world-wide and he is widely regarded as one of the finest photographers and printers in the United Kingdom. Blakemore has been the recipient of Arts Council awards, a British Council Traveling Exhibition and in 1992 he won the coveted Fox Talbot Award for Photography. He was also made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1998.
John Blakemore's books include Inscape (1991), Stilled Gaze (1994) and John Blakemore's Black and White Photography Workshop (2005).
John Blakemore writes that “The tulip work began during a period of crisis in my practice.
Gradually the tulip emerged as the dominant motif, as object of a continuing fascination, text and pretext for an activity of picture making.” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p145))
One of Britain's most respected photographers, John Blakemore is especially known for his photographs of nature. He was born in Coventry in 1936. In the 1950s he travelled to Libya with the Royal Air Force whilst on National Service, and it was during this time he discovered photography. Further inspiration came from Edward Steichen's The Family of Man. He evolved his personal work to become one of England's leading landscape photographers. He worked in diverse areas of photography from documentary, through portraiture to still life, with a particular focus in more recent years on tulips as symbols of sensuality and elegance.
Blakemore is celebrated for his brilliance as a printer and for the detail, texture and tonal richness of his work. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Photography at the University of Derby, where he taught from 1970 to 2001.
Blakemore's work has been exhibited world-wide and he is widely regarded as one of the finest photographers and printers in the United Kingdom. Blakemore has been the recipient of Arts Council awards, a British Council Traveling Exhibition and in 1992 he won the coveted Fox Talbot Award for Photography. He was also made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1998.
John Blakemore's books include Inscape (1991), Stilled Gaze (1994) and John Blakemore's Black and White Photography Workshop (2005).
John Blakemore writes that “The tulip work began during a period of crisis in my practice.
In attempting to define the parameters of a continuing, a possible practice I was writing and studying critical theory. The activity of writing was both pleasurable and frustrating, the blank page a tyranny which on occasion necessitated escape.
I decided to photograph as a parallel activity, an exploration of picture making to complement and inform my writing. The room in which I most often wrote was my kitchen, a confined space, a table, chairs, pictures on the wall, and on the table (a coincidence of season) a bowl of tulips, photographed, initially, because they were there, one element of the space I had decided to explore.
Gradually the tulip emerged as the dominant motif, as object of a continuing fascination, text and pretext for an activity of picture making.” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p145))
John Blakemore writes that “
The tulip is a flower of sensual and gestural elegance, of constant transformation, worthy of contemplation, of a prolonged and intensive scrutiny. The sustained working and reworking of a theme, a motif, facilitates an accumulation of reference through which the tulip can function both as object of celebration and as metaphor.” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, **Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p152))