Sam Haskins, born Samuel Joseph Haskins
(born 11 November 1926, died 26 November 2009), was a British
photographer, born and raised in South Africa. He started his
photographic career in Johannesburg and moved to London in 1968.
Haskins is best known for his contribution to nude photography,
in-camera image montage, and his books, the most influential of which
were Five Girls (1962), Cowboy Kate (1964) and Haskins Posters
(1973). He suffered a stroke on 19 September 2009, the opening day of
his exhibition to launch 'Fashion Etcetera' at Milk Gallery in New
York and died at home in Bowral, Australia, nine weeks later.
Haskins started his career as an
advertising photographer in Johannesburg in 1953. He ran what was
probably the first modern freelance advertising studio in Africa. He
produced commercial work across a very broad spectrum of photography
from still life to industrial, fashion and aerial. His first formal
creative output was a one-man show at the popular Johannesburg
department store John Orrs in 1960. This featured black-and-white
photography of models in the studio and included some photographs of
dolls made by the young Elisabeth Langsch, who went on to become
Switzerland's leading ceramist.
His international reputation and his
signature photographic passions were established by four key books
published in the 1960s. Five Girls (1962) explored a fresh approach
to photographing the nude female figure and contained important first
explorations with black-and-white printing, cropping and book design,
which were a key feature of his subsequent books. Cowboy Kate &
Other Stories (1964) was probably the first book to deliberately
explore black-and-white photographic grain as a medium for expression
and image design. It was highly influential at the time, sold roughly
a million copies worldwide and won the Prix Nadar in France in 1964.
It continues to influence contemporary photographers, film makers,
fashion designers and make-up artists. Cowboy Kate & Other
Stories or 'Kate' as the book is often referred to, had its place in
photographic history cemented in 2005 when the International Center
of Photography in New York included the book in their exhibition The
Open Book: A History of the Photographic Book from 1878 to the
Present.
In 1968 Haskins moved to London and ran
a studio in Glebe Place just off the King's Road. He worked as an
advertising photographer for international consumer brands Asahi
Pentax, Bacardi, Cutty Sark whisky, Honda, BMW, Haig whisky, DeBeers,
British Airways, Unilever and Zanders, and specialised in the art
direction and shooting of calendars, especially for Asahi Pentax in
Japan. Although he endorsed Hasselblad for a short period in the late
1960s and early 1970s, his loyalty to the medium format 6x7 camera
and lenses from Asahi resulted in a rare long-term association
between a camera manufacturer and photographer. From 1970 to 2000,
Asahi Optical (later Pentax) produced 30 calendars, of which Haskins
shot and art-directed 15 editions including the millennium calendar.
No other photographer was invited to contribute more than once. He is
still involved with the Pentax Forum Gallery in Tokyo, which hosts
his exhibitions. His first contact came in 1967 when Asahi Optical
presented him with a 35 mm camera after hearing that he had shot
African Image with various competitors' products.
In 1972 he produced his first colour
book, Haskins Posters.The large-format publication contained pages
printed on one side using a thick stiff paper and a soft glue perfect
binding allowing the pages to be removed and used as posters. Haskins
and Alida successfully published the book internationally through
their own company, Haskins Press. The book won a gold award at the
New York One Show. At the time the best-known image from Haskins
Posters, a girl's face superimposed on an apple with a bee near the
stem, appeared on the cover or in editorials of almost every major
photographic magazine around the world. This image was part of a
well-publicised visual and graphic experimentation with the apple
theme in the 1970s that for a while resulted in photographic
journalists nicknaming him 'Sam the Apple man'.
The images in Haskins Posters traversed
different creative themes that all became signature passions for
Haskins' image-making over the next three decades; graphically strong
compositions of nudes characterised by a natural essence in the
models while the image-making explored themes of graphic
experimentation, humour and sensual eroticism. Haskins has a
recurring theme (rooted in his training as a painter) of creating
tension in the surface of his photographs between flat graphic
elements and 3D chiaroscuro. These results are often achieved with
sophisticated lighting and/or double exposures. A highly creative and
design driven approach to lighting almost always plays a key role in
Haskins' work, both in the studio and on location. He often develops
complex lighting designs for a single specific shot that are never
repeated, the most recent example being a fashion shoot for New York
magazine's 75th anniversary issue shot in New York's Pier 57 studios
in August 2006.
From 2000 to 2005, he focused on
fashion photography for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Allure and New York.
A shortage of copies of the original edition of Cowboy Kate &
Other Stories (1964), which was selling to collectors for up to
US$3,000, led Haskins to bring out a digitally remastered 'director's
cut' version in October 2006, published by Rizzoli in New York. Apart
from image editing and layout revisions, the new version has 16 pages
of new images.
In 2002 Haskins and Alida moved to the
Southern Highlands in Australia and built the third house-studio of
their partnership. The move away from London resulted in a
renaissance in Haskins' fashion photography. While he always had a
passion for fashion from the start of his career, and Cowboy Kate
influenced fashion designers, who credited Haskins, he had not been
courted by the mainstream fashion world and he did not court them. A
shoot for [Yves Saint Laurent (designer)|Yves Saint Laurent] in Paris
in 2002 resulted in a 'rediscovery' that led to a stream of
assignments in London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney working for
fashion houses and magazines.Wikipedia
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