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Was it Alfred Hitchcock’s idea – or that of his photographer Albert Watson? In 1973, this “Harper’s Bazaar” photo went around the world: the master director holds a plucked goose in his hand and points at it with the other, with a melancholy look, according to the motto: This is what she gets out of it.
Another Watson photo shows Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards doing one of his favorite pastimes: smoking. Keef is a passionate tobacco fan, no: he was a tobacco fan, he gave up smoking. But the black and white shot of him blowing smoke into the camera has become the epitome of his drug use.
What is now perhaps Albert Watson’s most famous picture shows Steve Jobs. It also graces the cover of Walter Isaacson’s biography of the Apple founder, which gave us the image we most associate with Jobs today: that of the amused thinker.
Broad choice of motifs instead of clear classification
The photographer, born in Scotland in 1942, has been working for magazines, fashion houses and companies since the early 1970s. The retrospective “Albert Watson. Kaos” now summarizes this work.
Watson is not a genre photographer; alongside portraits of David Bowie, Steve Jobs, Kate Moss, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol there are nudes, still lifes, landscapes and street scenes. He brings his motifs into his studio, but also finds them on the streets of Las Vegas, Marrakech or major Chinese cities.
The selection of images in “Kaos” is supplemented by an essay by Philippe Garner, long-time head of the photography department at Christie’s, as well as quotes from Watson and previously unpublished Polaroids from his archive. In focus: Watson’s clear view of contours and contrasts – with the subject in focus. By the way, Albert Watson has been blind in one eye since birth.
- BAGS
- Albert Watson. Kaos
- bags.com
- Hardcover in a slipcase, 27.8 x 37.4 cm, 4.94 kg, 408 pages
- EUR 125