Tag: Black and White Photography

SIDNEY – A Tribute: part 5*

by adamhalevi, posted in Advertising, Advertising Studio, Black and White Photography, British Woolmark, Commercial Photography, David Hendry, Fashion Photography, Merino Sheep, Sidney Pizan, The Studio, Uncategorized

the master of anecdote…

In addition to his many talents, Sidney was a fine raconteur and a master of the anecdote. I related one of his most amusing military national service stories in an earlier post, but the Studio also offered up many hysterical moments, none of which my uncle enjoyed relating more than the story of the prize ram…

About 1969/70, British Woolmark (now Woolmark Company) hired Sidney to do a campaign for them. In his wisdom, the director of the first shoot decided that it would be a good idea to position a prize ram between two pretty models wearing the latest woollen clothes. This might have been a good idea, had it been a pastoral location, but he wanted it to be a studio piece. So, one prize Merino ram, and his farmer were summoned from deepest Sussex to Arkwright Road NW3. Even then things might have worked, had not the ram been brought straight from the muddiest, rain-sodden pasture, it’s fleece – the focal point of the shoot – caked in thick mud.

An old engraving of a Merino ram.

Sidney and his team had no option but to attempt to wash the ram, and with the farmer’s assistance, they managed to get the animal into the bathtub in Sidney’s flat – attached to the rear of the studio. However, the resulting bathe resulted in a drenched, grey woollen mat, rather than the snow-white, fluffy, pristine Merino fleece required by the director. Then someone suggested using a hairdryer to dry the sheep, which, after an hour or so actually worked but it still left the wool looking too dull. Then someone else had the brilliant idea to cover the ram with talcum powder. At this point, the farmer leant over to Sidney and warned him in his rich Sussex tones, “I should warn ye, that e do like to pass a bit o’wind…”.

The resulting photo session was a farcical nightmare: The ram was maneuvered onto the backing paper between the two models, donning their woolen finery. The talc, having got up the animals nose, caused it to sneeze and then fart. Every time it sneezed, a great cloud of talc filled the room like a fog. Every time it farted, a rich, pungent stench accompanied the fog, all of which caused the models to flee the room, choking and gagging. Then, the inevitable happened when the farting culminated in the ram evacuating its bowels – massively.

Somehow, eventually, the shoot was completed, with typically excellent pictures, of serenely smiling, elegantly attired girls, either side of a majestic, pristine and proud ram.

Unfortunately, I don’t have photos from the shoot to show here, but I do have another image which shows that The Studio could also be a place of intentional fun…

One of Sidney’s first assistants at the Studio was David Hendry. He was a tall man, but not quite this tall. This photo dates from around 1960.

* The title picture of a typical location shot product of Sidney’s Studio of the stagier variety, from The Art Director’s Index to Photographers, 1970 edition. Sadly, I am unable to identify the model (all suggestions welcome!) or the brand. Even more sadly, I am unable to gain access to a whole load of Sidney’s and his colleagues material to share on this site, including many famous and culturally important images. Hopefully, one day they will get the exposure they deserve, if not here, on some other platform where their contribution to British and international advertising can be fully appreciated and even perhaps inspire future generations of photographers and advertisers. I feel sure that this is what Sidney himself would have wanted and it is the legacy he deserves…

SIDNEY – A Tribute: part 2

by adamhalevi, posted in Advertising, Bill Young, advertising, Black and White Photography, Commercial Photography, Family Portrait, Gerald Green, Hampstead, Hannah Green, Michael Green, Portrait Photography, Sidney Pizan

A portrait of a family

Around late 1959, early 1960, my father, Gerry Green and his business partner, Bill Young launched out on their own as an advertising partnership. They had plenty of contacts in the industry and thus plenty of work, but soon found that the price of good photographers was prohibitive to the success of their burgeoning venture.

Fortunately, Gerry’s brother-in-law, Sidney Pizan, in addition to being a dentist, was a talented amateur photographer, and when approached was open to the idea of trying his hand at applying his skills commercially.

Sidney took to advertising photography like a duck to water, and within a few months, had established himself in Hampstead (in north London) as a professional photographer, getting more work – both from Gerry and Bill, and his growing string of contacts – than he could manage alone. Before long Sidney began recruiting other young aspiring photographers, apprentices and assistants to help him carry the workload and run his business. “The Studio”, as it was known, became something of a commercial photography academy, founding not only Sidney’s career, but those of a string of gifted colleagues.

In my next part of this tribute to my late uncle, I will go into more detail regarding Sidney and his team’s output of fabulous advertising images, but for Sidney himself, despite his success, his greatest creative enjoyment remained his “free” or “casual photography”.

Presented below are some of his best pictures, all of his family (particularly my mother – his sister – Hannah, my older brother Michael and I). If this seems a tad narcissistic on my part, I should point out, that we – his parents, and us – were the epicentre of his life, outside of his professional lives – and were, in a very real sense, his photographic muses. In those days, when out and about or when visiting the Studio , I can’t remember a time when Sidney did not have his trusty Rolleiflex hanging from his neck and him pointing it in our direction. Narcissistic or not, these images are moody, emotive, sensitive, an intimate family portrait, and just a damn brilliant illustration of the photographic portraiture and human study at its very best…

Sidney’s sister (my mum) Hannah, taken in 1960, shortly after being deserted by my father (Gerry the advertising man). I love the way this shot captures her sad dignity…
Sidney’s nephew (my big brother), Michael, in from the garden for a snack…
Me…
Hannah at Adelboden (Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, and much used in Bond films) – our first family holiday abroad in 1962…
Us three…
Adam, playing…
Brothers…
Hannah, happy and beautiful…
Hannah with me in the South of France…
After Sidney retired from commercial photography (in 1975), he turned the studio itself into an up-market picture framery. This was the last photo he ever took of Michael (right) and I together, working in the framery – about 1985.

GOLDEN MEMORIES in black and white

by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Ansell Adams, Black and White Photography, Childhood Memories, Edgware, George Lazenby, London Transport Museum, Sidney Pizan

a monochrome glance at my childhood

I’ve talked about the distinctive qualities of black and white photography before on these pages, and how it has an uncanny ability to capture the spirit and mood of a subject far more intensely than colour. It’s something the greats of the genre understood and exploited brilliantly; from the epic landscapes of Adams, and the deeply personal portraiture of Karsh to the lyrical life observations of Bresson; they all utilised the cleansing distillation of grey-scale-monochrome to the ultimate dramatic effect.

However, while the great masters took black and white photography to the level of high-art, equally nostalgic monochrome images were being snapped countless millions of times by less gifted photographers across the globe. And while their results might not classify as works of art, they nevertheless rarely fail to evoke and to entertain.

The images presented here are intended as a case in point and offer a small glimpse into my childhood, growing up in suburban London, which for all its fatherless challenges was almost as idyllic as it looks…

Summer , Edgware, 1963-ish, our back garden “pool”, with me and my big brother Michael and our lovely neighbours, Peter and Susan Gerard…
Same garden, different amusements, summer 1966, with Michael again, and assorted neighbours and school friends…
Edgware, Spring, 1967, in the kitchen, Michael and I using our baking sets. We both developed a keen interest in food and cooking from an early age, although I seem to recall that the results of this particular session ended up being fed to the birds…
London Transport Museum, Covent Garden, London, 1968; Being the nephew of Sidney Pizan, one of London’s top fashion photographers had all sorts of perks, like having the run of a fabulous steam locomotive during a shoot for Burberry. That’s Peter Watkins, one of Sidney’s assistants/apprentices setting up a shot with the Polaroid. Incidentally, the legs of the male model standing on the footplate above me belonged to soon-to-be-007, George Lazenby, who began filming On Her Majesty’s Secret Service a few weeks after this photo was taken.

BRIDGES AND FREEDOM “BC”

by adamhalevi, posted in Black and White Photography, bridges, Coronovirus / Covid-19, Dusseldorf, Melancholia, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Padua, Prague, Quarantine

And when melancholia was a pleasurable indulgence not a permanent state of mind…

So far as its visual content is concerned, this post follows on from a piece I did a few years back, and as with that one, I will allow the photographs to do the most of the talking. During our current dystopian circumstances, I find these images of bridges have taken on added poignancy as symbols of freedom, and most pertinently, of travel. While I yearn for signs of a return of some basic common sense from both those who govern us, and most of those they govern, these low-key “BC” photos of bridges from a dream-like past help me retain a degree of sanity if not much hope…

From top to bottom: Amsterdam, Newcastle Upon-Tyne, Prague, Padua and Dusseldorf.

Cameras used, Nikon FE (using Agfachrome), Nikon D80 and Canon EOS 5

MONOCHROME MEMORIES OF A COLOURFUL DAY IN THE PARK

by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Black and White Photography, London, London parks, Regent's Park, Uncategorized

My continuing trawl through thousands of old slide films for scanning is proving to be  not merely a trip down memory lane, but more a long voyage of haphazard, bitter-sweet (mostly sweet) rediscovery.

Because the films are all mixed up in no chronological or subject order , the experience of going through them is somewhat dreamlike in its lack of thematic anchorage. One moment I’m back in my childhood town of Edgware looking into the eyes of my first girl friend; the next, I’m hurtling down an Italian Alpine ski slope with the Martini ad music playing in my head before finding myself on a ferry in the middle of Puget Sound.  By the time I’ve completed a couple of hours scanning I feel emotionally jet-lagged. And so it was the other day when I came across one single complete black and white film of a lazy April bank holiday spent in Regent’s Park around 1983.

However, unlike so many of the mostly hazy memories evoked by this process, I found I recalled this particular day in almost every detail. For whatever reason that day is a vivid memory and being suddenly confronted by visual images of it was akin to being back there in the park. And, even more mysteriously, the fact the photos were monochrome merely crystallized my recollections .

For all of that, whether or not they are worthy of illustrating one of my posts, I am not so sure. However, if this does turn out to be simply an exercise in self-introspection, I do hope my that my regular readers and followers will indulge me this once. After all, at their core, these posts form an autobiography, and as such it would be incomplete without memories as colourful as this – albeit, in black and white…