Tag: 1980’s

Vivienne Westwood at Danson House

Steve Hickey
SH116586
Vivienne Westwood at the Danson House exhibition

Art, I believe, can only be fully appreciated ‘in the flesh’ so to speak. Music and theatre, for instance, are best seen and heard live, not on some digital medium. Paintings, sculptures, even original photographic prints elicit a more emotional response when seen in reality. So it goes for all art forms, and Vivienne Westwood’s creations are no different.

Dress detail
Dress detail

Vivienne Westwood: Cut from the past, covers her work from the punk years through to later pieces influenced by Vivienne’s love for 18th century art. Should these clothes be revered, referred to as ‘art’, just because they are placed in glass cabinets? Maybe, maybe not, but when I saw the exhibition I felt the same kind of response I have when seeing other artworks. Difficult to describe, so I won’t try, it’s only something that you get by being there. Of course it could be that the exhibition brought back memories of when I was younger. I even went to Vivienne’s Worlds End shop in the early 80’s to photograph Philip Sallon; I should have bought a few things from the shop when I was there and hung on to them! If you have any interest in fashion then this is an exhibition that should not be missed.

Dame Vivienne went to see the exhibition for herself last week. Afterwards she did a Q&A session following a talk given by Ian Kelly, who is the co-author of her biography.

The exhibition at Danson House continues until 31st October 2015.

Danson House link is below;

http://www.bexleyheritagetrust.org.uk/dansonhouse/vivienne-westwood/

Vivienne Westwood’s climate revolution website link;

http://www.climaterevolution.co.uk/wp/

On the street, Cadillac GWiz

Steve Hickey

 

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Left – Cadillac, Rue de Rivoli, Paris 1981. Right, a Gwiz electric car, Bread Street, London 2014

When I was younger I used to like wandering around the streets of London ( or where ever I might be) with my camera looking for interesting things to photograph, ‘street photography’ as it’s commonly known.

Now I’m doing that again. I’m in the City of London quite often so now I look around for things to shoot when I’m on my way to a job, or scout out a location to go back to later. It’s something I stopped doing for a long time. I was just concentrating on earning money I guess, it’s an easy trap to fall into, but for a while now I have been shooting more stuff just for myself. Anyway here are a couple of shots, old and new. I have been scanning some old work recently and when I saw the little electric GWiz on the way to a job yesterday I remembered my Cadillac shot (Paris 1981) which I had scanned only a few days ago. Cars that are on opposite ends of the spectrum in just about every aspect.

For the technically minded, the Paris shot was done using an Olympus OM -1 with a 35mm f2 lens, the GWiz with a Canon 5D3 and 24 – 105mm lens.

The 80’s, Talk Talk, Wimbledon ?

Steve Hickey
talktalk
Talk Talk, the New Forest , UK, 1983.

Recently I was photographing an 80’s themed event for a corporate client. The weather, unusually, remained acceptably warm so the event was held on the office rooftop overlooking London. After a while I started to take notice of the background music, and thought to myself:  photographed that band, and that one, and them, seen them, met him, etc.

A couple of days later I thought that maybe I should do the occasional retrospective in my blog. So here it is, 30 years ago this week I drove through Wimbledon in the early morning, passing the fans on their way to watch the tennis. I was on my way to shoot the band Talk Talk, one of the iconic bands of the eighties. I met them at their manager’s house and then we drove down to somewhere in the New Forest for the photos. One of the photographs from this shoot  was used last year in the unofficial biography ‘The Spirit of Talk Talk’.

Driving there and back through the Wimbledon tennis traffic has forever linked that shoot with  Wimbledon fortnight for me.