Henry Moore

John Hedgecoe’s image of sculptor Henry Moore is surprisingly candid, as he laughs wearing his daughter’s wig topped with a bow. Hedgecoe and Moore were close friends, spending most weekends together and holidaying together each year after they first met in 1956. Hedgecoe explained of a photograph from near the end of Moore’s life that ‘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] Although the two were friends, which gave Hedgecoe regular access to Moore over a period of decades, most resulting photographs do not show Moore as relaxed as he appears here.

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

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

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

[4] Ibid.