Today’s throwback Thursday includes a beautiful story from our friend Perry Ogden. Perry’s photographs have appeared in countless magazines worldwide, including Italian Vogue, Luomo Vogue, British Vogue, W, the Face, and Arena. He has shot Ralph Lauren, Chloe, and Calvin Klein advertising campaigns. These have supplemented more personal projects, including the PONY KIDS photographs published by Jonathan Cape/Aperture in 1999.
Please enjoy Perry’s recounting of the above photograph as we celebrate the career of the magnificent artist!
“That’s me – standing in for Alec Guinness playing Sigmund Freud – photographed by John Timbers. It’s February 1982, and I have just started out as a photographer. I’m sharing a studio with an erotica photographer – or maybe that’s a “photographer of erotica” – on the first floor of a house on the Fulham Road. My fellow photographer tends to shoot at night, then use the studio as a darkroom. I will arrive in the morning, open the door to a blast of chemicals and then have to clear the studio floor of bits and pieces leftover from the night before: black lace knickers, a suspender belt, even a whip or two. It’s a heady concoction for a young man trying to put together his portfolio and find some work. On this particular day, I have walked across the Fulham Road and up Netherton Grove to number 9a: the studio of John Timbers. I had started assisting John during the school holidays when I was about 14. Initially making cups of tea, sweeping the studio floor, that kind of thing. John took me under his wing and gave me an incredible grounding in photography. I was soon answering the phone, loading cameras, and helping in the darkroom. Much of John’s work was in theatre, tv and film. He was gentle, good fun, and had a great rapport with the people he photographed – a wide cross-section of entertainers and artists: Ralph Richardson, Ginger Baker, Dame Edna Everage, and Sir Les Patterson were just a few that I met. On this particular day, I was helping John out with some light tests. He was preparing to shoot Alec Guinness for the film Lovesick in which Guinness played the ghost of Sigmund Freud. Sadly I couldn’t be there for the shoot. By March, I had found a studio on Rosebery Avenue near to where I had grown up. A wonderful 3rd-floor open plan space of about 1,200 sq feet with a bank of mainly West facing windows. The rent was £50 a week. It was a stretch but too good an opportunity to pass up. An opportunity to have my own workspace and hopefully establish myself in some way.”
03/31/2022 | Posted by Eye Forward
Categories: Fashion, Perry Ogden
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