John French

'London Dress' V&A Portfolio Fashion Photography Limited Edition

1960

Dinner Jazz American Jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong enjoys a plate of spaghetti in Rome. Slim Aarons silver gelatine fibre based print Printed Later Slim Aarons Estat...

Derby Spectator A spectator looking through binoculars at the Derby horse races, Epsom, Surrey, June 1923. (Photo by Hulton / Getty Archive) Darkro...

'Las Vegas Luxury' 1954 Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Austrian actress Mara Lane enjoys waiter service in the pool at the Sands Hotel, Las Vegas, 1954. (Photo by Slim Aarons) ...

'Luxury Dining' 1955 Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition Diners in a grand ballroom during a fashion show, circa 1955. Slim Aarons silver gelatine fibre based print Printed Later ...

'Palm Bay Club' 1965 Slim Aarons Limited Estate Edition A young woman at the Palm Bay Club, Miami, Florida, USA, circa 1965. (Photo by Slim Aarons) Slim Aarons silver gelatine fibre...

'Commissionaire’s Dog' Kurt Hutton, 1938 A hotel commissionaire talking to a small dachshund dog in Piccadilly Circus, London, 1938. A beautiful image of a commissionaire dressed ...

An original silver gelatin black and white photograph by Press Agency Keystone View Company. New York City skyscrapers, July 7th, 1931. Features: Original Silver Gelatin Print Photog...

An original silver gelatin black and white photograph with framing. New York City by night, circa 1950. Features: Original Silver Gelatin Print Photography framed. Press Photography....

An original silver gelatin black and white photograph by Associated Press Photo. The USS Roosevelt aircraft carriers on the Hudson River, New York, during Navy Day...

Amodaj created the Hoop and Ball series of photographs in June 2010 with dancer and author Shawnrey Notto. The photographs were based on an earlie...

Amodaj created the Hoop and Ball series of photographs in June 2010 with dancer and author Shawnrey Notto. The photographs were based on an earlier series of drawings Nenad made of N...

Amodaj created the Hoop and Ball series of photographs in June 2010 with dancer and author Shawnrey Notto. The photographs were based on an earlier series of drawings Nenad made of Notto wearing parts of the deconstructed wedding dress during his figure drawing study in Michael Markowitz’s 23rd Street studio in San Francisco. The hoop skirt serves as an augmentation device, a skeletal extension meant to alter the visual perception of the human form. To realize the full associative power of the hoop, Amodaj created a counter-shape to the hoop, a white sphere (the Ball) made from plaster strips, to match the cloth texture and placed it in a dynamic relationship with his model. Notto improvised the poses from Nenad’s drawings in constant slow motion. The whole project was done in two 3-hour sessions with no rehearsals and no replays. The minimalistic setting, uniform lighting, and central vantage point shift perception from a trivial reality to a metaphysical one. The intent was to induce the spectator to spontaneously alternate between the three aspects: the human form, the symbolic function of the skirt, and the geometry of the cone and sphere. The spontaneity of dynamic poses and the imperfections of a handheld camera balance this sparse imagery. The exhibition presents a selection of 15 photographs from a project collection of over a hundred. Most of the series are gelatin-silver prints from a 35 mm film, with a few exceptions for large-scale digital color prints. Amodaj was influenced by the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher's typologies of industrial buildings and František Drtikol’s nudes. In the spirit of Becher’s “typologies,” Amodaj’s Hoop and Ball series of photographs explores endless mutations of the hoop skirt architecture, a clothing item with a curios geometric form that can be classified as a “flexible cone.” It is a form that appears both in nature and in artifice: flowers, bells, horns, nuclear power plants...