David Hamilton was born in London in 1933 and lives in an 800-year-old home near St.Tropez, France. David studied architecture and interior design before turning to typography and layout. While he was an art director of English magazine Queen, he bought his first camera. Later settling in Paris as art director of Printemps, he began devoting himself exclusively to photography.

He has worked for the best international magazines, including Vogue, Realites, Twen, Playboy and Oui. His work has been shown all over the world, including leading centres of art culture in New York, Tokyo, London, Hamburg, Milan and Paris. He photographs in a dreamy, romantic, and tranquil style, characterized by subdued natural lighting, graceful period clothing of muted pastel hues, lace and flowers. His models often appear in varying degrees of disrobe and it is a tribute to his talents that the photographs are always tasteful, decorous and suitable for viewing by all ages.

David pioneered the “soft-focus” style which has been imitated so often and is even known as “the Hamilton look”. The technique gives many of his works more the appearance of an impressionist oil painting than a true-to-life crisp photographic image. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has released an average of about one book a year, selling millions of copies. There have been further millions of posters, postcards, calendars, greeting cards and similar items sold.

Clever marketing strategy called for the print runs of his books to be below market demand. Popular titles such as 25 Years of an Artist (1994) and Age of Innocence (1995) sold out completely (50,000 copies each in Britain alone) in just their first week of release there. Another more-recent title, Holiday Snapshots, was the quickest of all titles to sell out completely. Earlier books command three — and occasionally four — figures, us dollars, on the second-hand market.