Dreamlight and Desire: The Soft Eroticism of David Hamilton’s 1970s Photography

In the sun-drenched haze of the seventies aesthetics there is one artist who emerged with the camera and a vision for soft eroticism: David Hamilton (1933-2016). His photographs whisper a particular kind of eroticism, one that doesn’t shout or shock, but instead glides, diaphanous and intimate, soft and tender, always on the verge of dreams and desire. Hamilton’s signature style is unmistakable; pastel-toned lighting, blurred edges, and subjects, always pretty young girls, caught in languid repose, just like those ‘dolce far niente’ paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema and John William Godward but with less clothes and the erotic touch is more emphasised. The most unique quality about Hamilton’s work is the way he romanticised the adolescent female body, the body of a young girl on the threshold of womanhood and this fascination of his sparked admiration, controversy and a lasting debate. Still, to view his work completely and solely through the ethical lens of the twenty-first century would be not only unfair, but also it would ignore the complexity of his aesthetic vision. Picasso wasn’t a nice person, but when we discuss the greatness of the ‘Ladies of Avignon’, for example, we talk about the aesthetic not about the personality of the artist. In this sense I appreciate Hamilton’s work greatly and to me it is a dreamy world which I love to gaze at and indulge in very often.

Fig.1  'The Muse ', 1971

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Fig.3  The Age of Innocence (Photobook)

Different Kind of Visual Intimacy

In the 1970s Hamilton’s photographs offered a different kind of visual intimacy, one that resonated with a generation which was in the throes of sexual revolution and a nostalgia for lost innocence. Hamilton’s eroticism is dreamlike, he takes pictures of bodies but captured much more, an atmosphere, a state of being. Just like a poem by Rilke or a slow melancholy melody of Chopin’s Nocturne, Hamilton’s photographs evoke a state of being almost touched; the skin tingling not from contact, but from suggestion. The soft focus becomes a metaphor, nothing is fixed and nothing is certain, everything glows in the soft sunlight and trembles. The girls in his photograph often look away, their eyes are turned downwards or turned towards the window. These aren’t portraits of seduction, but rather postcards from the strange and silent terrain between childhood and adulthood, laden with longings and sweet anticipation.

Fig.4.  A Place in the Sun

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In the extended Premium edition of the article more about the rich aesthetic inheritance in Hamilton's work, the deeper provocation in his photography, the author's favorite photograph, 48 additional pics, and much more...!

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