The model for this picture, Gabriella is a cook in a hospital, but she had always desired to do something artistic. When I first saw her I immediately thought of a woman from La Belle Epoque, she looked as if she had stepped out of Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre; in fact with her crow black...
The second of the series after the Corday. I had had in mind the idea of interpreting the Ingres’ Grande Odalisque for some time and I had even done a version with the same set, but the first model was not right. Then in 1989 a girl of just eighteen happened by my gallery in Bologna. She had...
This photo, the first of the series was a response to a competition organised by an arty Café in Bologna. The model Soraya who bore a certain similarity to Marat in the original, was the first in a long line of willing, patient and extraordinary, ordinary women who have modelled for...
I went to Art College in Kingston, London, on the banks of a shallow, weedy and unremarkable river with the evocative name of Hogsmill. We were told in History of Art that Millais painted his famous picture further up-stream. Millais’ model was Elizabeth Siddal wife of his friend and...
Klimt painted two versions of the bloody biblical story of the slaying of Holofernes by the Jewish patriot Judith, the second he painted after his visit to Ravenna where the Byzantine gold mosaics had a profound affect on his technique. In both versions Judith holds the decapitated head...
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is one of those paintings that is immediately familiar even to those who know little or nothing of art. For this reason it was chosen to launch the series “Le Belle nell’Arte” in an Italian regional newspaper based in Rimini. The image was so instantly...
Orpheus and Eurydice, one of the best known and heart rending myths. The gifted Orpheus whose music was so lovely that he charmed not only women and ferocious beasts but even the trees and rocks. He fell in love with the beautiful nymph Eurydice but on their wedding day she was assaulted...
Dragon was prompted by Pauline's wonderful tattoo of a Japanese dragon. Personally I'm not all that keen on tattooing but in this case I felt I'd met someone who had a work of art on her back. This image was realised shortly after the Japanese earthquake and the nuclear disaster that...
Fuseli, German Romantic 2007 Fuseli: a German romantic, a lover of Shakespeare and the Gothic, friend of Blake, a painter of remarkable sensibility and psychological perception, a forerunner of the Symbolists. Nightmare, of which he did several versions, was something of an obsession. Perhaps he...
I have lived in Italy for over 25 years and have been working on the Belle (which means beautiful women in Italian) for 20 of those years. In this video Belle I recount how approach my models, about my mentors and more. As this is an ongoing project I am always interested in...
The women in my pictures are unpaid amateurs of all ages, types, nationalities and cultures. Many of them have never posed before for anything other than snapshots. What's it like for the photographer and what's it like for them? The photographer's point of view. The Meeting. I am quite brazen...
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