Henry Moore

John Hedgecoe explained that although he took this photograph of Henry Moore as a joke, it was chosen by the Henry Moore Foundation for the cover of an exhibition catalogue. [1] He described, ‘I placed him on a pedestal instead of one of his sculptures.’ [2] The camera is lower than the sitter, so Moore seems to loom over the viewer. Moore liked his sculptures to be photographed at base height, to make them appear monumental. [3] Here it is the sculptor, not the sculpture, that is presented as a modernist icon.

He raises his knee almost forming the shape of a Henry Moore sculpture with a void under his leg, like the hole in one of his carvings. The image of Moore and the plinth stands out against the light background, but he is framed by a dark shadow as it shifts from light to dark at the top of the frame.

Moore and Hedgecoe remained friends from their first meeting in 1956 until Moore’s death in 1986 and during this time, Hedgecoe took around 6,000 photographs of Moore. [4] 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. [5] 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.’ [6]

His 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, December 2020

[1] John Hedgecoe, Photographing People (London: Collins & Brown, 2000), p.118.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Estelle Lovatt, Henry Moore at Work: Photographs by Errol Jackson (Ellingham, Suffolk: Jeanette Jackson, 1998), p.9.

Read More