THE AGE OF AWAKENING

Playboy Magazine - August 1971

"with rare sensitivity, photographer david hamilton captures the ineffable, elusive beauty of emerging womanhood"

Caught in half sleep or in rapt self-contemplation while disrobing for a bath, the youthful beauties of David Hamilton's portraits are perfectly poised.  Hamilton, whose camera seems an invisible presence, regards the placid composure of his models as central to his photographic art.

Hamilton's photos are illuminated not only by the golden glow of sun streams but also by the bloom of his slender young models, who seem to delight in the ripening of their lithe figures even in the innocent repose of sleep.

Adhering to a photographic style he calls "completely classic", Hamilton captures on film his subjects' languid limbs, their natural, artlessly erotic postures and the almost wistful, introspective expressions on their ingenuous faces.

Simplicity, soft light and perfect composition---as in studies of a pensive girl before a mirror or amid the disarray of castoff clothes---are, in Hamilton's words, "the whole thing," the special elements that make his portraits unique.

Hamilton usually shoots his sensitive tableaux in southern France, but he often journeys to Sweden in search of models "because Scandinavian girls are uncomplicated and very natural; they don't have complexes and their bodies."

"For me, it is necessary that beauty be very soft," Hamilton says of the lambent lighting in his subtle pictures.  "Fortunately," he adds, "there is enough undiscovered beauty throughout the world for me to keep going forever."

In his early work, Hamilton shot mainly landscapes and flowers.  Only in the past two years has he devoted himself to photographing women.  Understandably, he plans to concentrate on the female form almost exclusively in the future.