Beyond the French windows in Don Bachardy’s Santa Monica portrait studio, a canyon studded with white-painted houses, palm trees, pines and eucalyptus tumbles down to the gleaming blue Pacific Ocean. It’s the kind of view that epitomizes visitors’ fantasies of Los Angeles, but which people who live here seldom get to enjoy firsthand, and certainly not on a daily basis.
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The invitation, when it comes, is invariably by email and typically consists of the entirety of the note crammed into the subject line, plus a random image.
“Can you make Ricks tomorrow Thursday at 8.30 am…….derek,” read a recent message accompanied by a photograph of a headshot of Julie Andrews adjacent to a paper Union Jack. “Sent from my iPad.”
Read the rest of this entry »‘Not Interested in that Sort of Thing’
David Hockney, “Nude, 17th June 1984.” Photographic collage, 63 × 44 ̋. Edition of 20. © David Hockney.
“Well I think she’s rather beautiful,” said my grandmother. It was Christmas. I must have been 11 or 12, and the large book that she had open on her lap—her gift to me—was open at an image so ridiculously sexy that my pre-pubescent cheeks were flushed deep red and my scalp was tingling. Read the rest of this entry »
Jonathan Griffin 