Henry Moore

Hedgecoe said of this photograph, ‘As we had become firm friends, there was no awkwardness at all when I brought the camera out for this picture. I do not think that he was even aware that I had taken it.’ [1] In this image Moore looks wistfully out of the picture frame, but in another from the same sitting his head is turned, this time completely aware of the camera [link to 50274]. In a portrait from two decades earlier, also looking directly at the viewer, Moore as a younger man seems more challenging [link to 50269].

In each of these portraits, Moore supports his head with his hands. The hands were an important feature to both Hedgecoe and Moore, both of whom appreciated the expressive qualities of the hands. Furthermore, in their images together, they drew attention to the hands of the sculptor, to reinforce the view that his works were made directly from the sculptor’s own hands. Behind Moore is a landscape of trees framed by a curtain on one side, suggesting Moore is sat at home near a window.

Moore and Hedgecoe had been friends since their first meeting in 1956. In total, Hedgecoe took around 6,000 photographs of Moore. [2] 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. [3] 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.’ [4] Although Hedgecoe has dated this photograph 1986, it may have been slightly earlier judging from other photographs from the date.

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.

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