Famous English photographer Bob Carlos Clark was born in the Irish town of Cor in 1950. In 1969 he moved to England to study art and design. Here he developed an interest in photography. In 1975, Clark received his Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art.
During this time - thanks in large part to the advice of his friend, the famous artist Allen Jones - he began to photograph women dressed in tight rubber suits. This image brought him fame as one of the "founders of fetish imagery"
Clark was a "generalist". He has worked in almost every field of photography and has won numerous awards, including successful advertising campaigns. His rare portraits of celebrities, taken in various places between 1971 and 1998, are kept in the National Portrait Gallery. Among them are portraits of Elton John, Marco Pierre White, Rachel Weisz, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Brian Ferry.
His work in advertising projects attracted him with high pay. Bob Carlos has shot for Smirnoff and Wallis, Volkswagen and Pirelli, UrbanStone and Levi's. But he always returned to his favorite topic - shooting naked girls.
Arranging photo shoots in his favorite nude genre, Clark preferred to shoot models "from the people."
“The prepared model looks like a semi-finished product, as if you are getting something half cooked by other chefs,” the photographer argued for his choice.
He preferred to shoot in an expressive manner. Most often, the heroines of Bob Carlos's photographs were defiantly sexy women. And although the ordinary conservative viewer was often not enthusiastic about his masterpieces on billboards, the customers of the works more than liked it.
Bob had always worked with film, but he understood the inevitability of the digital era:
"I think this is the best and worst thing that ever happened to photography."
In life, Clark was vulnerable.
“The creation of photography requires a lot of exertion of all internal forces. When everything goes right, you feel like a winner. But if it doesn't work out, you just want to lay hands on yourself,”said the photographer.
In 2006, he was tragically killed by throwing himself under a train. Bob Carlos Clark has published six photo books. In our selection of works from different collections.
See also - "Agony and Ecstasy": hormone-charged photographs of young lovers from the 90s
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