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Happy birthday Sir Michael Gambon
This 2019 portrait by Richard Learoyd @NPGLondon is special: it was made using a camera obscura & the Ilfochrome dye destruction positive-to-positive photographic process. A unique photo of a unique actor.
In Richard Learoyd's camera obscura photographs, light falling on the subject is directly focused onto the photographic paper without an interposing film negative.
Big Sur I, 2018
Richard Learoyd’s portable camera obscura at Big Sur.
📷 Miles Mattison, 2018
But back to birthday boy Michael Gambon:
He's one of the great actors in this recreation of Leonardo's Last Supper by photographers Dean Mitchell, Alistair Morrison & Andy Teare. How many can you name?
Answers here - click on "Identify" by each name: npg.org.uk/collections/se…
I wondered why Robert Powell got to be Jesus in this recreation of the Last Supper, & then the penny dropped. He played the role before, without glasses, in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth, 1977
The Last Supper photo was taken in 2011. Alas, Tim Pigott-Smith, who plays Simon Peter, with his hands outstretched, is no longer with us; he died in 2017. I believe, though, that the others are all still alive.
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Happy birthday to Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk 🎂
📷 Ara Güler
"His books are multi-layered, allegorical, sometimes fanciful, Proustian in their attention to detail and Borgesian in their dazzling complexity."
- Sarah Lyall
Orhan Pamuk by Sophie Bassouls, 1990
"Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow."
It's so great that other photographers have continued Philippe Halsman's #jump! tradition. Here's Orhan Pamuk by Alex Majoli.
This was taken at Cannes in 2007, when Pamuk was a member of the Festival Jury.
Celebrate the Richard Avedon Centennial 🎂💯
📷 Irving Penn, Vogue, August 23, 1993
"He was small, dark & electric with his own sort of vitality. Crackling. Sparks seem to fly out of him. He flashes his fingers like tiny rapid moths."
- Ginette Spanier
On Richard Avedon's Centennial, my favourite portraits
Carson McCullers & Tennessee Williams, April 25, 1950 #Avedon100
On Richard Avedon's Centennial, my favourite portraits
Buster Keaton, 1952 #Avedon100
I'm listening to Concerto Italiano play Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, in their 2005 recording under Rinaldo Alessandrini.
I've always loved the cover photo; it's by Julia Fullerton-Batten. I'll start a thread of some of my favourites of her photos here. 🧵
Julia Fullerton-Batten
The Lady of Shalott, 2018
... which is, of course, a reinterpretation of John Waterhouse's 1888 painting of Lord Tennyson's poem.
Happy birthday Sofia Coppola 🎂
📷 Kate Barry
"Coppola is a true auteur — a filmmaker with a distinct worldview and sensibility and a personal set of quasi-autobiographical interests."
- J. Hoberman
Sofia with her dad on the set of Godfather 2
📷 Steve Schapiro, 1974
The Coppola family by Ted Streshinsky, 1974
Eleanor & Francis Ford Coppola with their kids Sofia, Roman & Gian-Carlo
Celebrate the Red Garland Centennial 🎂💯
📷 Bill Spilka, c. 1957
"Garland's style was understated and harmonically sophisticated; he would delineate a melody, then shade it with distinctively voiced block chords and hints of counterpoint."
- Jon Pareles #RedGarland100
Esmond Edwards' great album cover for Red Garland's "Red in Bluesville", from 1959. Edwards took the photo, & designed the album as well.
Remembering Bea Arthur on her birthday 🎂
📷 Martin Mills, 1972
"Those of us working with her knew we were working with a golden comedic touch." - Norman Lear
Beatrice Arthur with Bill Callaway & Carl Ballantine in Bruce Jay Friedman & Richard Adler's musical A Mother's Kisses
📷 Jack Mitchell, 1968
Angela Lansbury & Beatrice Arthur in Mame
📷 Friedman-Abeles, 1966
Arthur won the Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony for her performance. She was Beatrice on the stage & Bea on TV.