66 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk
©
THE
CONDE
NAST
PUBLICATIONS/GET T Y
IMAGESI
n the 1940s and ’50s the
photographers who shot for Vogue
reads like a list of some of the gods
of photography. Richard Avedon,
Irving Penn, Horst P Horst, William
Klein, George Hoyningen-Huene, Erwin
Blumenfeld, Lee Miller, Edward Steichen,
Cecil Beaton... the list goes on and on.
Vogue, even if one was not interested in
fashion, became the natural home to many
who we now consider to be among the
‘greats’. The brilliant commissioning and
freedom given to its photographers during
this time made for a creative atmosphere
that has seldom, if ever, been matched.
One name is not on this list, and for rather
sad reasons.
Clifford Coffi n was an American
photographer brought over to work for
British Vogue after the war. Coffi n had
studied and worked with the renowned
George Platt Lynes and he had obviously
absorbed Lynes’ sparse, minimal look and
run with it. His pictures were, for the time,
strikingly modern and fi tted seamlessly
into the groundbreaking images British
Vogue were publishing at the time.
A complex individual
An outspoken homosexual whose bad
behaviour was legendary and what one
colleague described as ‘a great and
frightening capacity for self-destruction’,
Coffi n’s career in fashion was far too short.
He was, by all accounts an extremely
diffi cult man. A heavy drinker with an
extremely short fuse and apparently a
penchant for throwing anyone who
disagreed with him down the steps of his
studio, was never really going to make the
grand dames of Condé Nast love him.
Despite all this however, he managed,
during his all-too-brief heyday, to shoot some
breathtaking and groundbreaking fashion
photography. He was one of the few people
to photograph Christian Dior’s seminal ‘New
Look’ collection of 1947 and he was also a
skilled portraitist, who photographed Lucian
Freud, Ernest Hemingway and Richard
Attenborough among others.
He was also, interestingly, a pioneer of
usingtheringflash,a deviceoriginally
Final Analysis
Tim Clinchconsiders...
‘MaryJaneRussell’,1953,byCli ordCo nforVogue
Photo Critique
developed for use in dental photography
but now used by pretty much every
photographer in the world.
Coffi n seemingly did not enjoy a happy
life. He suffered from alcoholism and drug
addiction for most of it, and died of throat
cancer in Pasadena, California, in 1972,
aged 58. His career as a fashion
photographer petered out in 1958 when he
pretty much retired from photography
aged only 45. He never had an exhibition
or a retrospective, never published a book
ofhisworkandlostthevastmajorityofhisarchive in the mid-sixties when a fi re
tragically destroyed his New York studio.
So, a sad tale of what might have been.
Who knows what he may have become if
his demons had been held in check. The
photography that remains is dazzling. That
he remains largely unknown and seldom
mentioned to this day remains one of the
great photographic tragedies.
RIP Mr Coffi n and thank you. I’m
possibly quite glad that I never met
you but boy oh boy... you had one
hellofan‘eye’.Tim Clinch is an award-winning professional photographer with over 40 years’ experience. Over the years Tim has worked in most areas of the profession, has had his work published in
magazines worldwide, and has had more than 30 books published featuring subjects as varied as interiors, travel, food and portraits. To see his work, visit http://www.timclinchphotography.com.