Our REFLECTION SERIES continues, this week we are looking at the iconic British photographer Harold Chapman
… as well as wishing him a Very Happy 93rd Birthday!
Beat Hotel photographer, Harold Chapman
As part of this new online series, not only are we looking at particular highlights from our featured artist’s collection, but also showing works which have never been released….
“If Chapman were merely a chronicler in a great documentary tradition, his achievement would be impressive enough. His lustrous landscapes of the Herault valley in the Languedoc, his priceless record of the Beat Hotel, his omnivorous, year-on-year transcription of daily life and its little undercurrents, would ensure his reputation as a photographer of the first rank. But it was constructive paranoia that made him an artist.”
– Ian McEwan
GROUP ON KINGS ROAD
Original silver gelatine print developed and printed by Harold Chapman.
1/1, mounted, signed 39 x 33 cm, £350
Harold Chapman sits down with Linden Hall Studio Gallery Director, Myles Corley for an ‘in conversation’ intervew. They discuss Paris in the 50’s, Les Halles, London in the 60’s, and the Beat Hotel. As well as the quiet beginnings of one of Britains most highly regarded street photographers.
AFTER THE MARKET
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC
1/1 mounted, signed
39 x 33 cm
£350
“After the market closed for the day, all the unsold food in the streets was bulldozed into piles, swept away by wagon trains and disposed of. This was a time for a mad rush of people trying to pick up scraps and jumping on to the train. This meant that the poor were able to eat well. The gleaners are rapidly and thoroughly picking out perfectly fresh edible food harvested a few hours ago.”
Harold Chapman
BRION GYSIN DREAM MACHINE
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC
1/1 mounted, signed
38 x 31 cm
£400
It was a very small gallery in a tiny street not far from the Beat Hotel. I was just wandering around the streets and came across the open door where I could see Brion Gysin and the Dream Machine so I went in and he asked me to take some pictures which I did and they are the only pictures of Brion with his machine that I ever took. Later on, when putting the book together with Lagarde who was publishing it, we had a long argument… Brion insisted that it should be in the book that it was taken in the hotel, not in the Galerie Valerie Schmidt, or he wouldn’t contribute to the preface. Any time the picture of Brion sitting on the floor or also the ones taken close up were published, they were always written up as being in the Beat Hotel. ‘
Harold Chapman
A PORTER WITH HIS BARROW
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC
1/1 mounted, signed
32 x 39 cm
£350
“An official noticeboard in Les Hailles, Paris, including an advertisement for a job as a policeman, is passed by a porter with his barrow. The street poster of the policeman is designed by Guy Georget.”
Harold Chapman
DIANE BARKER, THE BEARFOOT JAZZ DRUMMER
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC, 1/1
mounted, signed
36 x 42 cm
£400
“Diane Barker had a room in the Beat Hotel on the Left Bank. She wanted a photograph of her, sitting on her bed in one of her latest creations. This is the moment that I discovered that she walked around with bare feet… Several years later I remember a short article in an American paper that Diane Barker, the barefoot jazz drummer, had had a crash on her motorcycle!! … Next to her is Angus MacLise but all that is showing is his hand and arm… I didn’t stay long or the conversation might have turned around to who and what am I doing, which might have circulated among their friends. ”
Harold Chapman
… AND GIVE ME A SMILE
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC
1/1 mounted, signed
32 x 39 cm
£350
“In Les Halles, Paris, behind a vegetable stall, I was trying to get a shot of this girl with long pigtails. She always spotted me. So I never got her working, but one morning at dawn she gave up dodging me and gave me a smile.”
Harold Chapman
EARLY MORNING
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC
1/1 mounted, signed
39 x 32 cm
£350
“In Les Halles, early morning, the market has come to a stop and in a few minutes’ time the clean-up of the streets will begin. A butcher in his bloodstained overall stands waiting, along with a group of people, to grab unsold food as soon as the streets start being opened up to traffic and what is left over can be had for free.”
Harold Chapman
OFFICER PASSES A BARRED ENTRANCE
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC
1/1 mounted, signed
39 x 32 cm
£350
“A police officer passes a barred entrance with a notice for the newspaper France Soir announcing what is going to happen to Les Hailles… This picture was included in an exhibition of various photographers who were showing their photos of the market… Before the exhibition opened, two agents from the Prefecture examined all the pictures and mine had to be removed until the Chief of Police had left.”
Harold Chapman
OFFICER PASSES A BARRED ENTRANCE
original silver gelatine print
developed and printed by HC
1/1 mounted, signed
39 x 32 cm
£350
“In Les Halles, Paris, an elderly lady is going the rounds of all the fast food stalls to keep them supplied with fresh bread and other food, a quick snack for the workers and people wandering around in the cold dark night.”
Harold Chapman
Previously unseen images of Beat Hotel artist Guy Harloff…
Guy Harloff standing outside the door of the Beat Hotel, number 9, rue Git-le-Coeur. It is a grey misty morning. He is musing to himself as to where to visit first as he is taking me round to show me all the curious things menaced by building development or themes that artists were working on. He had a little studio in the Beat Hotel.
GUY HARLOFF
original silver gelatine prints
developed and printed by HC
1/1 Mounted, signed
sizes vary£350 each
Previously unseen images from the Beat Hotel …
“Walking out on to the Quai des Grands Augustins one early morning, there was a crowd of people watching an artist painting. It included – sitting on the wall – the South African poet and writer Sinclair Beiles. As I hadn’t got any pix of him, it was easy to photograph him outside in the crowd so I took several pictures but I like this expression of angst. “
Harold
Chapman
“The girl in a cell in the Beat Hotel, Paris, Left Bank, was very fond of showing off to anyone interested how she used to experiment on hairstyles in a mirror. She used to decorate the wall with odd things, objets trouves, dress up in her white clothes that she designed and made, and wore long black gloves.”
Harold Chapman
In the cafe, a very early breakfast of two Swedish sisters, Eyla and Annika, and the American Liza Ames who is nursing a thermos flask of coffee. The girls are dressed in sheets taken off the bed for it is the Festival of Light, Santa Lucia, patron saint of photographers and anyone working with light. In Sweden it was celebrated on 13th December. The girls are about to go round the hotel, singing and banging on all the doors and offering a free cup of coffee… not at all well received, as most of the inhabitants had only just recently got into bed and didn’t want to be disturbed and expressed this in strong language! All these pictures of the event were taken in candlelight. Annika’s got her lush blonde hair showing.
Harold Chapman
“… So I went up and up and came to the top. Here it became really complicated. I could see the top floor was not really the top floor, but that above the top floor was an additional construction that they must have squeezed in somehow to make some extra money. I could see two doors but how to get to them was rather a problem. Bending double and almost walking on my hands and knees, I walked along a gallery and bending even lower I eased my way under a large dent in the ceiling which had obviously been made by people banging their heads on it for the last 200 years, and by stepping up the steps to the room opposite to the one which I was going to, I was able to step across to the other steps… Eyla had invited me up to take photographs of her at the top of the steps. She was a pin-up model for the photographer Serge Jacques. She is standing outside the door of her room, number 40. Under the stairs is a communal toilet for everyone on the two and a bit floors at the top of the hotel. On the left can be seen canvasses painted by “Kaja” in Room 41, standing there to dry.”
Harold Chapman
BEAT HOTEL
original silver gelatine prints
developed and printed by HC
1/1 signed
sizes vary £400 each
