BERNADINISM

These are some early fashion photographs taken on or next to the cold storage building on the Thames. It no longer exists but the the remnants of the jetty is still there.

Young Woman With a Glint in Her Eye Stares at Absolutely Nothing While a Plane full of Holiday-makers Passes Overhead.

I developed this slide at home in my kitchen sink and as soon as I saw the lens flare in front of her eye I knew it was an Alva Bernadine picture. At the time I was cropping or partially obscuring faces so this picture fitted in perfectly. When I took the picture I did not see the lens flare because I did not shut down the lens and this was a happy accident. That is what I like about shooting outdoors, these unplanned fortuitous accidents that make a picture. I saw the proximity of the ladder and the gasometer and set up the shot. As I was getting ready to take it, I saw the aeroplane approaching and waited. I still did not have a flashmeter by then and the original was about half a stop under exposed. The model later took up weight training and starred in the tv show, Gladiators, in the UK.

This was the first nude I ever took. I looked at it and thought there was something missing. I saw the shadow of the ladder on the wall and it eventually came to me that what it needed was the shadow of a man climbing it. Since it was impossible to get the model back I decided to incorporate the idea in my shoe picture, The Fetish IV.

Writing this post brought back the memory of what I originally wanted so I Photoshopped the image. I would have been able to do the same thing using double exposure at the time. It would have been far quicker.

Little Miss Muffet Loses her Arachnophobia

I came across this handbag in Fiorucci. I borrowed it not knowing how I would use it but it looked interesting. Back home, thinking what interesting articles I could put in it, I tried it over my head. So it was back to Battersea with a model and a flash gun.

Thr first time I attempted to take this picture there was a bang as my flash gun blew up. I went out and bought the most powerful one I could afford, a Metz 60 CT1. I have rarely used anything other format than a 35 m camera because I like the proportions of the frame, I liked the grain and that everything is the right way round when you look through them. I also hate to crop my pictures and when I have had to do so it means I have got the composition wrong. I bought a Lubitel 120 camera brand new for £13 to experiment with the larger format. It was tinny and this was the first time I used it. I subsequently discovered it worked well at small apertures but blurred significantly around the edges at large apertures.

One thing I learned from Cheyco Leidmann was the use of tungsten film particularly on overcast days. It is known in the film industry as “day for night “. The night sky is not blue but it very often is in movies. To make this work you have to put an 85B orange filter on the flash. Where the orange light falls neutralises the blue blue bias of the film because it is its complimentary colour. I added a warmup filter to the flash as well. A blue background is a nice background for a colourful picture and can make a virtue of an overcast day. With the aid of an artist’s colour wheel, I once went through a sample swatch of Rosco film gel trying to find complimentries. When you lay them on top each other the resultant colour is grey. I even used them with the tungsten film turning the background purple or turquoise. nowadays you can do it on a computer, of course, but it is still faster to do this kind of thing on the shoot.

The Fiorucci umbrella and cape said “Energy” on them so the power station seemed the appropriate place to take it. I used mirror to reflect light on her face. Somebody reported us and a young police officer found us and said we would have vacate the property. Apparently people would steal the lead from the roofs. He seemed pleased to see the model, though. We moved to an abandoned cold storage depot down the road. It proved to be a red letter day because it was the first time I ever did a topless shot.

I was still learning about using flash outdoors. The flash gun I had was not that powerful and needed to work at close range. The model through the coke can in the air

I befriended a guy at frame making class. He was a geologist for petroleum locating company. I did my first ever job for his company. Anyhow, he had a 15 year old step-daughter, Psyche. In search of a model, I asked her to pose for me. We turned up at Battersea just as a storm was clearing, with her and her mum.

I had borrowed clothes as usual from Fiorucci. The first shot was taken just as the sun was coming out. I got her mum to act as my assistant to throw in the fish. This was the first adumbration of my Trained Fish picture I did  three or four years later for GQ.

The Imperial Embrace of the Male: Alva and Psyche on the Tickle Point

As the sky cleared further I took this one. I went there with the idea of a woman and man dancing i got from a Bruce Weber photo but did not know where I was going to take it until I saw the wall. Although it might look dangerous, there was only about a 13 foot drop to the next level of the roof. I set up the the camera and her mum took the picture.

By the third shot the sky had cleared and I had her mum throw a bunch of flowers in front of her face. The sun by then was so low it threw my shadow into the picture  so I used it. You can see Vauxhall Bridge in the background. I used to have my work printed up on Cibachrome (long discontinued), and some art directors used ask which country I had shot, not believing you could get that sort of light in London.

When my parents left the country, my dad left me a half finished tin of shaving cream named Pagan Man. Looking for something to photograph, I chose it because I liked the name. When I was 18 or 19 I bought a fedora and a cashmere coat and thought I really looked cool. I decided I would use the hat for my shadow pictures, so off I went to my Battersea outdoor studio. I mostly went in the evening when the shadows were long. Seeing their potential I began to use them.

In the attempt to produce a commercial portfolio, I decided to use a wine bottle. I liked the the shape and label of the Mateus Rosé bottle so used that. I bought an off cut of laminate board and used a mirror as a reflector to light the label. I cannot remember how I came up the shadow of a hand but I may have it as I was setting up. I shot it on my seminal roll of film that gave me three folio shots.

This last shot was taken on a crisp fresh day in early November. I saw the cloud
coming and had to work fast. I used polarising and neutral density filters to slow
the shutter and get movement in the tree.

I started showing my work around and although there were those who professed to love it, no one would give me a job. One the few times I ever tried to be an assistant, I went to see a big name advertising photographer. He saw the wine bottle pictures but did not remark them. On my way home on the tube station platform, I saw a large billboard of a shadow of a hand reaching for a pint of Guiness that was perched on wall. I had been to see several art directors Guiness’s agency, Ogilvy and Mather. It made me think. I later found out that the photographer I had just been to see had taken it. Years later I was undoubtedly plagiarised by an ad agency. So much so that they were too lazy to change a thing in the picture. They had to pay me money in the end.

I came up with the idea of a man standing on one leg bending down to pick up an object. I could not think what the object should be but I knew that in true surrealist style it had to have “resonance”. The object had to lend the shot significance. There was a a Fiorucci shop on the Brompton Road that loaned me clothes and it was in there that I saw the Jackson Pollack pattern shoes. It immediately brought to mind the Guy Bourdin advertisements I had seen in the annual, Modern Publicity, so thought I would use them.

The Fetish I, The Two Towers

I shot this around midday on top of one of the derelict buildings in front of Battersea Power Station. I put on a polarising and warm up filter and set the 28 mm lens set around f22. I  mounted the tripod column upside down to get low to the ground and the shoe gave me an indication of where I would be placed in the frame. A woman in a block of flats across the road saw me and went back indoors to fetch her binoculars. I started to feel self conscious and ridiculous standing on one leg but carried on. Seeing the result, I realised that there was not just one definitive way to depict this shoe and thought I would make it into a series. I photographed over the next three years and eventually won me a competition for young photographers, the Vogue Sotheby’s Cecil Beaton Award.

The Fetish II, The Shrine

The way to the power station was past by a large Post Office sorting office. I liked the difference in pattern and shot this early one Sunday morning when the light was right and there was no one about.

The Fetish III, The Dream of the Masturbator

I had taken another shot and was about to leave, when I saw the warm light on the side of building. The quickly setting sun was shining through a hole in the canopy. I had to set up fast, quickly banging in two large nails to support the shoe. This was the penultimate shot before the light went.

The Fetish IV, Umbral Spectre at Eventide

I had shot a Newtonesque nude in the doorway and looking at the result, I thought there was something missing and eventually came up with the idea of having the shadow of a man climbing the ladder. I could not get another naked lady back to the spot, let alone when the light was right so decided it to use the idea in my shoe series. Covering half the lens, I held up the shoe and shot the right side then climbed the ladder and shot the other half. I had to wait two or three weeks for the shadow to be that defined. It was shot about eight in the evening.

A couple of years ago I was in the doctor’s waiting room and picked up an interior decoration magazine. In it was an ad for Italian or Spanish furnishing and it had the shadow of a man climbing a ladder in exactly this attitude in hat and coat. I thought this could easily be influenced by me but where could they have possible seen the original? It was then that I remembered that my first book, Bernadinism, How to Dominate Men and Subjugate Women, had been published worldwide. I did not mind because the concept had been altered significantly. It is only when people have copied my work with hardly changing a thing that I am bothered. This has happened in the past. My modest gripe is the photographer probably made more money out of the concept than me. Such is life.

Fetish V, Hand and Knife expressing the Sentiment of Love are Metamorphosed  into a Sundial Illumined by the
Light of the Moon, Whilst the Shade of Alessandro Valente sings Non Piangere Liù from Turandot by Puccini

I shot this in a disused goods lift with concertina gate. I shot the flash through the gate, not quite knowing how the shadows would fall and hoped for the best. I wanted to create the impression of a hand stabbed in the act of reaching for the shoe. The shadow of the knife combined with the placing of the fingernails reminded me of a sundial and I was listening to Valente at the time I made up the title. Incidentally, it is the only time I put both shoes in the same picture.

The Fetish VI, Eucharistic Altar

By this stage I was probably going through a religious phase in my work.  The bread and the wine were undoubtedly referring to the body and blood of Christ. I was trying to infer that the shoe was worshipful. I made the cabinet for my woodwork exam at school and still have it to this day. I took out the back and while I was taking another picture it fell on it’s front, breaking a piece off the door. I laid it on the ground hoping it might imbue the image with perhaps more depth. I had to wait for the sun to get in the right position then work quickly. I used what Cokin described as a colourback filter effect. That is putting a green filter on the lens and the complimentary magenta one on the flash. Where the light falls the colour is neutral while the background turns greenish because that is the colour over the lens. I used gels that turn fluorescent light to daylight and vice versa. You can see the powerstion in the background.