londoner | creative genius | anarchic | dynamic - brian duffy

He was the son of a man who's involvement with the IRA landed him in prison for murder. Running wild in the streets of 40's bomb riddled London, this young thug was rescued by a then experimental school that turned delinquents around through cultural experiences & art.



As a young fashion designer in the 50's, he made the leap to photography because, "it was a darn sight easier than drawing", states the guardian.co.uk. He said: "I wanted to make women look good. That really intrigued me. To make a model look as though she owned the clothes." It was a ­philosophy that took him to British Vogue and then French Elle.

Born 1933 in north London, Brian Duffy (nobody called him Brian) was one of three working-class young men who grabbed the snooty, elitist world of photography by the balls and turned it into one big private party. Duffy (Brian), Bailey (David) and Donovan (Terence) were a new breed. "The typical 1950s photographer was tall, thin and camp. We're short, fat and heterosexual", Duffy said.

Cecil Beaton, one of the last of the old school, called them the Terrible Three. "Their photography was brash, sexual, in-your-face. It made no apologies and took no prisoners".

Terence Donovan - photographer

"Those three were the holy trinity," said the photographer Terry O'Neill. "They changed the face of fashion. They brought the macho into photography and turned it on its ear."

photographer David Bailey

photographer Brian Duffy

The three photographed models, musicians, politicians and luminaries for ads and stories and covers. Duffy later photographed icons like David Bowie — creating the Aladdin Sane album cover, for example, well before the punk era of colored hair.

The "Black Trinity" photographers became bigger than their subjects in many cases; they were practically celebrities themselves.

But, as swiftly as Duffy entered and revolutionized the scene, he left it.

In 1979 Brian Duffy walked into his studio and found there to be no toilet paper. His response was only somewhat extreme: he promptly set fire to his entire collection of negatives and slides, renounced the vocation for good and then slipped into obscurity. "I just lost interest. I didn't like the people and I didn't like me because of them". He puts this decision down to ''the dickheads I had to hang out with. Twats'.

Duffy went almost 30 years without taking another photograph. That is, until his son Chris decided to resurrect his photographic legacy, organizing Duffy's first exhibition in 2009. Chris not only unearthed what remained of his father's archives, but also organized new photoshoots with his former models.


Son Chris' homage to his father was put into place just in time. Brian Duffy passed at the age of 76 on May 31 from degenerative lung disease. He died just a few months of the exhibitions closing.


Duffy married his wife June at the age of 21. He recently commented about his deep love for her & that love created four children & nine grandchildren. That was a blessed life and a life that he lived as he saw fit. When his work was not what he had envisioned, he stepped away with little or no fanfare. He moved on to create the next phase of his life.

Would it not be grand to re-create ones-self when life goes on a course that we had not charted? To live life on our own terms?

Duffy's work was recently celebrated in a BBC Four documentary, 'The Man Who Shot the Sixties, in which contributors to the program remembered him as "a bit of a b******" during the height of his career.

Looking back at his photographic career, he once said: 'I just think of it as passing through. A phase.' He never regrets packing it all in? 'Do I look like a man with regrets?' No, he doesn't.


So it rang true when he proclaimed: 'The best days of my life are now.'

1933 - 2010

Another great read - BBC News', 'Photography's Impact on the 60's'.

Peace in heaven Duffy
Your mastery will always be with us.

{go forth & live responsibly}
history and artistry
learn & relish

content & photo credits; guardian.co.uk; npr.org; timesonline.co.uk; vogue.co.uk; bbcimage.co.uk; tumblr.com; guim.co.uk; clmus.com; telegraph.co.uk; wikipedia.org; royalacademy.org.uk; hautefashion.com