A tribute article to one of most famous and astonishing photographers: Bob Carlos Clarke. Life, art and death of an innovative master of photography. Article by Francesco Sani.
Bob Carlos Clarke has been one of the most influential photographers of all the times. Ten years after his tragic death, his work continues to stir interest and has left behind an important legacy for all photography lovers. Subversive, voyeuristic and provocative, he was able to successfully combined the power of eroticism with advertising messages. His photography clearly depicted to a sensual and dark fetish world, but even the most risqué works were attractive for too many people. He says that a picture has to be moody, mysterious and very seductive, probably this was the key to his success. In the 80’s he worked for commercial brands such as Volkswagen, Martini, Levi’s and Smirnoff vodka. Bob Carlos Clarke was born in 1950 in Cork, southern Ireland, to an impoverished aristocrat English family and became a photographer by chance. He thought that photography was a good way to meet girls after school and he used to ask them to pose for him. In 1975 he graduated from London College of Printing and then did a MA at the Royal College of Art. During his days as a student he worked for magazines writing articles about photography and also taking pictures for them
In the late 70’s London’s fashion scene was dominated by Punk and Fetish style and one of his friends, the artist Allen Jones, advised him of incorporating it into his work. At that time, in Los Angeles, the great photographer Helmut Newton was bringing the taboo of fetishism into mainstream fashion photography and onto the pages of popular magazines such as Vogue (“Fashion is a fetishistic pursuit”, Newton said). A few years later, thanks to his talent and original vision, Bob was the British answer to Helmut. He had photo shootings with famous models, actors and musicians such as Keith Richards, Bryan Ferry and Elton John. Like the German master, he mostly took black and white portrait pictures. He used to spend hours and hours in his dark room developing the best images from his negatives, producing his well-known monotone with strong lighting and shadow contrasts. As a purist of analogic photography, he considered himself an anti-digital because, in his opinion, it changed the photo shooting experience. Later, he had to admit that digital photography and editing software have giving everyone the skills without the trial era experience in the dark room.
In 1995 his book “Dark Summer”, a collection of sensual images, was a best-seller and art galleries all over the world started to collect his printings. Today they sell for thousands of dollars! Back in the 1994, the Sunday Independent newspaper published his black and white images of posh teenagers at Public School Balls. This series, as a collection, was shot at the Hammersmith Palais in London and showed what sort of orgiastic parties for teenagers took part at public school balls. Those explicit images showed the abandonment of youthful innocence and produced scandalized reactions in Britain. Bob Carlos Clarke was a cool artist, icons such as the Rolling Stones and Lady Diana were amongst his friends. In the 90’s he had the largest photographic studio in London and there he could do what he wanted with his camera, even ask famous British actress Rachel Weisz to pose for him in a sexy latex catsuit as Catwoman! In the early 2000’s, despite being an acclaimed artist, he was never satisfied with his work and symptoms of manic-depression tended to appear in his life. His wife Lindsay, his former muse model said that he wanted to be a legend, but he became depressed about his work. He was afraid of getting old while all his models seemed to be always in their 20’s. He was obsessed about capturing women’s beauty with iconic images, often preferring unknown models than the famous ones. He had a photo shooting with top model Elle MacPherson, but preferred to spend his nights in strip-clubs in search of his next muse which gave him more excitement. In 2004, Bob created a series of photographic editions for two exhibitions entitled Love-Dolls Never Die in Madrid and in London. Love-Dolls Never Die was an award-winning and highly regarded exhibition, it also a book was published based on his pictures and a lot of people were standing in line to have their copy signed at the release party. However, he didn’t enjoy all his achievements. His agent said that he was very disappointed with the National Portrait Gallery because it had not held his pictures yet, so he suffered because his talent that was not institutionally recognized. Psychotic and clinically depressed he accepted to check in to a hospital in early 2006 but it didn’t last long. On the 25th of March in the morning, he checked out the hospital, walked along the railways for a mile, arriving at the railroad crossing near south London Barnes station and jumped in front of a train. In the preface of his last book he quoted: “to qualify as a legend get famous young, die tragically and never underestimate the importance of your iconic photographs”. His violent death at age of 55 was his last photograph. Since 2008, two years after he committed suicide, the National Portrait Gallery has held Carlos Clarke’s ten prints of celebrities for its public collection.
Sources: YouTube.