Henry Moore

The sculptor Henry Moore is sat near a window in front of a landscape of trees framed by a curtain. The setting and Moore’s outfit date the photograph to the same sitting as another portrait in which Moore looks wistfully out of the frame [50277]. The photographer John Hedgecoe explained of this photograph ‘As we had become firm friends, there was no awkwardness at all when I brought the camera out for this picture. I do not think that he was even aware that I had taken it.’ [1] In a portrait from two decades earlier, also looking directly at the viewer, Moore as a younger man seems more challenging [link to 50269].

In each of these portraits, Moore supports his head with his hands. The hands were an important feature to both Hedgecoe and Moore, both of whom appreciated their expressive qualities. In their images together, they often drew attention to the hands of the sculptor, to reinforce the view that his works were made directly from the sculptor’s own hands.

Moore and Hedgecoe had been friends since their first meeting in 1956. In total, Hedgecoe took around 6,000 photographs of Moore. [2] In some of his photography manuals Hedgecoe used his images of the sculptor as an example of how to take a prolonged portrait of a single subject. [3] As Hedgecoe explained, with photography ‘you capture forever a frozen instant of time. But how much more meaningful those images can be is made plain when you see a progression of pictures of the same person taken over a long period of time.’ [4] Although Hedgecoe has dated this photograph 1986, it may have been slightly earlier judging from other photographs from the date.

His photographs of Moore formed the basis of four books, which incorporated Hedgecoe’s photographs alongside Moore’s words. Although he produced around 30 photography manuals, these were Hedgecoe’s only books on a single subject.

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