David Hamilton (photographer) - Career and Current Life

Career and Current Life

His artistic skills began to emerge during a job at an architect's office. At age 20, he went to Paris, where he worked as graphic designer for Peter Knapp of ELLE magazine. After becoming known and successful, he was hired away from ELLE by Queen magazine in London as art director. Hamilton soon realized his love for Paris, however, and after returning there became the art director of Printemps, the city's largest department store. Hamilton began photographing commercially while still employed, and the dreamy, grainy style of his images quickly brought him success.

His photographs were in demand by other magazines such as Réalités, Twen and Photo. By the end of the 1960s, Hamilton's work had a recognizable style. His further success included many dozens of photographic books with combined sales well into the millions, five feature films, countless magazine publishings and museum and gallery exhibitions. In December 1977, Images Gallery in New York City showed his photographs, at the same time that Bilitis was released. He also maintained an apartment in New York.

His soft focus style also came back into fashion at Vogue, ELLE and other high-class fashion magazines from around 2003. Long ago, Hamilton was married to Mona Kristensen, who was a model in many of his early photobooks and made her screen debut in Bilitis. More recently, he was married to Gertrude Hamilton, who co-designed his book The Age of Innocence, but they have since divorced amicably and she lives in New York working as a painter.

Hamilton divides his time between St Tropez and Paris. Since 2005 he has been enjoying a revival in popularity. In 2006 two new books were released: David Hamilton, a collection of captioned photographs, and Erotic Tales, which contains Hamilton's fictional short stories.