Henry Moore

Sculptor Henry Moore peers out the window of a car with his wife Irina in the driving seat, stopped in a dramatic ford. Later in life, when Moore was less mobile, Irina would take him on drives so he could see the landscape. The car cuts across the picture frame in this image, making a dramatic composition in an otherwise idyllic setting.

The photograph was taken by Moore’s friend, the photographer John Hedgecoe. In total, Hedgecoe took around 6,000 photographs of Moore. [1] In some of his photography manuals Hedgecoe used his images of the sculptor as an example of how to take a prolonged portrait of a single subject. [2] As Hedgecoe explained, with photography ‘you capture forever a frozen instant of time. But how much more meaningful those images can be is made plain when you see a progression of pictures of the same person taken over a long period of time.’ [3] Hedgecoe’s photographs of Moore formed the basis of four books, which incorporated Hedgecoe’s photographs alongside Moore’s words. Although he produced around 30 photography manuals, these were Hedgecoe’s only books on a single subject.

Tania Moore, January 2021

[1] As estimated by Charlotte Bullions and Emily Unthank at the Henry Moore Foundation, 2020.

[2] John Hedgecoe, Photographing People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), p.56.

[3] Ibid.