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David Hamilton, photographer – obituary
David Hamilton, who has died aged 83, was a photographer whose soft-focus images of naked or semi-naked girls, poised on the edge of puberty, became an issue in the “is it art or pornography?” debate.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Hamilton’s images featured in exhibitions and graced public buildings. He was briefly artistic director of Queen magazine, and his gauzy “Hamilton blur” was applied to everything from photo shoots for Vogue to publicity photography for the Nina Ricci perfume L’Air du Temps. His numerous books ended up on coffee tables around the world.
Hamilton’s photographs were widely considered sensitive portrayals of innocent youth, even if their blatant eroticism gave some the creeps. On the Mediterranean beaches of Cap d’Agde, he became a familiar figure, “shopping”, as he put it, for young models. Parents rarely refused their permission.
Hamilton declared he was inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial classic Lolita, claiming he shared the writers’s “obsession with purity”. But he never denied that sex was a big factor, and often paired his photographs of young girls with captions about their forthcoming deflowering.
“She is lovely, our nymph,” read one caption in his book Age of Innocence (1995), “and her potential is infinite. Heaven grant her the man who is worthy of her, and who comes to her bringing sex with tenderness. She has her virginity and her innocence; she will, if she is fortunate, trade them in due course for experience and love.”
In the less innocent 1990s, however, conservative Christian groups in America persuaded Alabama and Tennessee to slap indictments on Barnes and Noble, the country’s largest book retailer, charging it with violations of state obscenity laws, citing Age of Innocence, among other books. The suits were unsuccessful, though the book was banned in South Africa, while in Britain it was cited in at least two convictions for possession of level 1 child pornography.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 1998, Hamilton mocked the efforts of what he called the “great unlaid” to censor his work. In most of Europe, he claimed, no one thought twice about such things. But his confidence proved misplaced.
David Hamilton was born in London on April 15 1933 and spent some time as an evacuee in Dorset.
After leaving school, and a short stint in an architect’s office, he moved to Paris to work as a graphic designer for Elle magazine. After a short period as art director at Queen magazine, he returned to Paris as art director of the department store Printemps. He also began publishing commercially.
Hamilton also made several films. His debut, Bilitis (1977), was a lesbian drama starring the model Mona Kristensen, his first wife, and in the 1980s he went on to direct several other soft-focus tales of scantily-clad young teenage girls coming of age.
Hamilton’s professional interests, however, came back to haunt him in October when he was named on French television as the “internationally famous photographer” who had featured in a memoir by the television presenter Flavie Flament, who claimed he had raped her, aged 13, after recruiting her at Cap d’Agde. Three other women then came forward to claim that they too had been raped as young teenagers by Hamilton.
Hamilton dismissed the initial allegation as “abominable libel” and threatened to sue, pointing out that, due to France’s statute of limitations, the time had passed in which any charges against him could be brought.
On Friday, however, Hamilton was found dead in his Paris flat. Police sources were quoted as saying that it appeared he had committed suicide.
Hamilton’s second marriage to Gertrude was dissolved.
David Hamilton, born April 15 1933, died November 25 2016