Welcome to the only official web presence of photographer David Hamilton. English but based in St-Tropez, France, David is almost certainly the most popular and successful art photographer the world has ever known. He produces dreamy, romantic images, pioneering the photographic style that bears his name and has been imitated by many — though never equalled.
In a career spanning over 40 years he has released about a book a year, selling in the millions of copies world-wide. Not to mention countless postcards, calendars, greeting cards, posters and signed, numbered, limited-edition exhibition-quality photo-prints. He has also made five feature movies.
His works hang in the United States Library of Congress, the White House (Clinton years), Carnegie Hall, the palace of the Danish royal family, the Guggenheim Museum and many other art galleries, museums and fine homes around the world.
He has worked with politicians, royalty, the daughters of former models, the rich-and-famous and just-plain-folks in many countries. Hamilton exhibitions have been held in over thirty countries and, despite being now in his mlate seventies and virtually retired, he is still in huge demand and will probably continue working for another seventy years!
On the site you will find a large collection of David‘s favorite pictures. Unlike other Pay-to-View (PTV) sites you might be familiar with, there are no ‘sets’. David and the website team choose the pictures carefully and lay them out in a harmonious way, as if they were in one of David's books.
Speaking of books, we get many requests for copies. Almost all of his books are now out of print and there are no plans to reprint them but new Hamilton books might arrive in book-stores from time to time. It's a long job but, ventually, all pictures from the old books will be on the site.
Again, unlike other PTV sites you might be familiar with, there are no ‘reject’ or ‘filler’ pictures. you won‘t see twenty pictures of the same girl standing under the same tree. We think this practice by other webmasters is an insult to members’ intelligence and a misuse of their membership fees. Every picture on this site is worthy of your attention.
“Talking to this ‘most famous’ photographer about himself and his work might turn out to be a quite difficult and even painful affair. Though, when discussing art, 20th century society and morals — often for hours at length — he unconsciously reveals himself.
He’s a very charming, solitary man, quite happy and at peace in his own particular world, where there is hardly room for harsh reality. This end is therefor ignored; not because he is trying to hide or cannot cope, but simply for its obvious ugliness. David Hamilton is above all an aesthete and a visual poet.
Convinced that photography was at his best around the turn of the century, his aim is not to create anything ‘new’ or ‘modern’. According to him photography emerged out of painting and he deliberately wants to remain in this field.
Many reproach him his radical rejection of any sign of the times. All polution, misery, poverty, sickness and violence are foreign to his world.
He is not a journalist nor a commercial photographer; he is an artist, filling the empty canvas with the subjective vision of reality. Out of the visual chaos he selects what affects him the most: purity, freshness, harmony, simplicity, innocence, all things untouched. Whether he is photographing young girls, landscapes, seascapes, still lifes, or architecture, he gives them all this dreamlike quality.
Yet this is not what makes a “Hamilton picture”. There is a subtle secret which remains undefined and explains why so many tried and failed. His photographs show an elegant, playful dance of light and colour. To detect this particular beauty he is looking for, his eyes are a constant radar, always alert, constantly searching. When found, all other things become of have little importance.He approaches the subject with full attention, grasps it, moulds it until it becomes his own, a timeless vision.” — Gertrude Hamilton
