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Bruce Bernard
Lucien Freud working in his studio with Leigh Bowery
1992
Dye-bleach print
11+ x 15¢ins (28.5 x 39.4 cm)
Christie's - London
Courtesy of Christies, London (Sale: 7434 - Photographs, Lot: 90 - Nov 13, 2007)
LL/24278
Inscribed 'Happy birthday June, 1992, Bruce X' in ink on verso.
Bernard's photographs of Lucien Freud have a simplicity and ring of truth that could only have been achieved by someone who was respectful, but not in awe either of his subject or his medium. Bernard had known Freud for many years and had, indeed, sat -- or rather stood -- for his own portrait in oils by the artist. A degree of trust and a complicity between the modest but wilful Bernard and the notoriously private artist were essential for the execution of these photographic and painted portraits. After years studying and working with photographs as a picture editor and writer, Bernard knew how to avoid the phoniness of so many portrait encounters. He maximised the potential of the medium by using it without pretension, but his photographs undoubtedly reveal what the subtitle to a 2002 show of his works at Tate Britain called 'a painterly sensibility'.
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