John Claridge’s Lighter Side
“Coming from the East End, I used to go to sleep at night listening to the sound of the ships and my dad was a sailor who told me tales of his travels – so I wanted to see the world.” Photographer John Claridge confided to me, revealing the source of his wanderlust. Yet as a child in the nineteen fifties, growing up in the shadow of the London docks, I doubt if John ever imagined that he would one day be photographing a vessel like the one above, as he did for the Indian Tourist Board in 1980.
John’s family had worked as dockers for generations, but in John’s youth the docks were already in decline, so when he left school at fifteen and went to West Ham Labour Exchange, he told them he wanted to be a photographer. Blessed with precocious talent and easy charm, John was offered immediate employment by the photographic department of the McCann-Erickson advertising agency. It was the first step in an exceptional career which took him out of Plaistow and sent him on assignments all over the world, working at the peak of his profession for decades.
This selection of pictures from John’s global odyssey shows the flowering of his creativity in the commercial arena, which came after his East End documentary photography I have published over the past year.
“I think I lived through the golden age of advertising in which you could be creative with your art, I don’t think you can do that any more.” John admitted to me, “There was no photoshop, you had to go out and take the photograph – and you discovered things and you ran with it. All of these pictures were done in the frame. If you bolt it together from library images, you just get the bleeding obvious.”
Indian Tourist Board 1980
“I made several trips to India and came back with all kinds of pictures, and then I worked with a designer and a copywriter and we were free to be creative.”
Lloyds Bank 1975
“This was on a beach in Cornwall. It was probably the weather we didn’t want. We had a horse for two days and we just let it run. You got the best horse you could, so we got one that had been ‘Black Beauty.’ This picture was used for a forty-eight sheet poster.”
Jack Daniels 1986
“The guy was just whittling while he waited for the whisky to mature – it was his job, it was what he did. Tennessee was a dry state at the time.”
Land Rover 1989
“We stayed with Richard Leakey in Kenya and took a safari by Land Rover. I got pretty close, it’s surprising how close you can get to a Wildebeest in a Land Rover, but you don’t want to get out or it spooks them. The texture of a Wildebeest is fantastic, the hide has a luminosity. We did giraffes, zebras, everything…”
Adplates Calendar 1985
“This was for a calendar created for a reproduction house. The photograph was taken in daylight but the print is solarised in the processing.”
French Tourist Board 1974
“This is very early in the morning near the Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries where the Impressionists painted. It was an experiment to see if we could get the feel of those paintings in a photograph.”
Kodak 1978
“This was for a calendar Kodak did to demonstrate the qualities of different films they manufactured. So I said, ‘Let’s go to Venice.’ The light is very beautiful out of season and I used a mirror lens which gives the feel of a vignette.”
Goretex 1989
“This is in Alaska on Mount McKinley. We flew into base camp and climbed up to take the photo. The man in the picture is the guide who took us up there.”
Vichy Cosmetics 1972
“She was driving an old Rolls Royce that we hired for the day in Paris. The dress is her own, because it’s about her individuality – not about creating something fashionable, but about her complexion and how she sees herself.”
Porsche 1989
“We shot this in the South of France, the light is good there, and I treated the Porsche as sculpture – you don’t need to see the car.”
Great Ormond St Hospital
“They asked me to do a charity thing. I thought, ‘They mend broken children, so I’ll get a broken doll and let people figure it out.’ It’s not a happy picture, it reminds me of the figures at Pompeii.”
Carras (Hellas) Shipping 1974
“This was for the cover of the Annual Report of a Greek shipping line. I found this barrow of tomatoes just around the corner from the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, I couldn’t believe it was so beautiful – the red glowed. If you’re going to show Byzantium, you have to show it through something other than the obvious.”
Pirelli Calendar 1993
“We did this in the Seychelles and it was a lot of fun.”
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
Take a look at these other pictures by John Claridge
Along the Thames with John Claridge
At the Salvation Army with John Claridge
A Few Diversions by John Claridge
Signs, Posters, Typography & Graphics
Views from a Dinghy by John Claridge
In Another World with John Claridge
A Few Pints with John Claridge
Some East End Portraits by John Claridge
Sunday Morning Stroll with John Claridge
Just Another Day With John Claridge
At the Salvation Army in Eighties
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round One)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Two)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Three)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Four)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Five)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Six)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Seven)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Eight)
Wow! What a revelation. I always enjoy those posts where you showcase John Claridge’s photos, but these show yet more facets of his wonderful work.
Thank you for these. They are beautiful and also stunning.
These are a wonderful start to a cold dark morning. I recognised a lot of them as well! Often wondered about the Jack Daniels photos. Love the Paris shot.
Stunning.
Thank you for a lovely start to the day. These images are works of art. .The range and quality is incredible. Most of all though, looking at them delivers a dose of pure pleasure – something welcome on a winter’s morning.
Love the beautiful Indian Tourist Board shot, Porsche sculpture, and the contrast of the tom’s to the background.
Beautiful artisitic images !
Thanks.
Lovely to see the work that paid the bills. Love the Tulliers one, took some there last year when on a wee photo trip. Have not got round to finishing them off yet. Great as always John.
So good to see colour being loved. L
French Tourist Board is my favourite with the elephant a close second. Keep on smudging!
The Kodak 1978/Venice is the one I really like,followed by the Tuileries .
Looking forward to playing My Favourite Photo again next week!
Wonderful photos. The first one with the flowers in the boat is one of the loveliest I have ever seen
JC’s “Lighter Side” is what I grew up with . . . quite simply the best commercial photographer around . . . be it in his advertising work, his editorial essays and in those travelogues he undertook just to satisfy his insatiable curiosity . . . the world as seen through JC’s lens . . .
quite revealingly marvellous!
I remember the Lloyds black horse very well and fondly. The image has a wonderfully wild and free look, whether you wanted that weather or not!
The Goretex shot on Mt McKinley is stunning. I would love to know how those orange hues were made to shine so brightly.
I always knew there was a lighter side somewhere down there.
The first shot in this series is one of my all-time favorites.
Exquisite!
AT
These are just stunning, Every one of these has it’s own brilliance.
Wow, as a photographer I can really appreciate the beauty of these wonderful images. What amazing artistry!
Kat
The first shot hits essence, a Brancusi ship of jewels, treasure of the raj,
the intense red of Klimt or Moreau , saffron scarlet pigment bomb burst
of excited festival framed in umber shadow against mother of pearl Joseph
Conrad morning light.
All the work here needs no copy or logo’s, as every shot has acute presence,
but we had to wait for CDP to ‘let the client add an egg’ for that moment to
come to light much later and then for a small moment in time ….
I too dream’t of sailing ships and high adventure which jumped and caught me
through those wonder illustrated volumes of Westerman, Henty, Sinbad,
Arabian Nights and the poems that conjure glowing horizons, Drake and
Raleigh, Kubla Khan, the great spaces in Conrad, and we first took to
water under our own flag [ that is no parent was there to clap us in irons ] in
salvaged ‘drop’ tanks from the fighter planes playing war games up in the lark
song sky. sort of square coracles … Later tried to join the Merch. Leman St.
This collection is on song and on fire with the visceral energy of insight – gets me going –
‘ …. Was lookout watch on a 28 gun on high in the crosstrees, saw a galleon
wallowing like a drunken sailor across the deep blue seas, Called down to my
shipmates Give chase lads lets be bold, And before Orion unveils the moon
We’ll have galleon and gold …[¢ je. prs.] …….Tally Ho! x
Is it the colour?Is it the black & white?Is it the subject.The angle.The light.No….it’s JC.Give him a camera and a roll of film and let him get on with it.We know that we are going to get an image.A JC image.
End of story.
John,
You brightened my day! How fortunate we were to have lived and worked through such
a golden age. Thanks.
John Claridge’s Lighter Side? Oh no, not at all!
Great ways to see: The John Claridge through the years.
Beautiful stuff. And who can forget Paris, the work for Vichy and Lilliane Francois’s (did I spell that correctly?) gallery with the Man Ray lithos?
My God!! I didn’t realise you did that fantastic Lloyds horse shot!! That is such an amazingly striking image, John. I am old enough to remember it well!
beautiful work, John – amazing
Above are some of the images that inspired me 25 yrs ago to take the sometimes very painful path to become a photographer.Time has moved on but these images still make me want to grab my camera and go explore.
Believe it or not, and cheesey as it may sound, I immediately wrote a poem for my wife inspired by one of the shots.
I pray to save you from the everyday
I pray to save you from the everyday
Liberate you from the customary
Free you from the normal
Tiresome, vanilla, flock and beige
I pray you sustain some form of reverie
Your mind an inattentive absentee
Spared anything that intervenes
To bring you down to earth
Away with the fairies, is my wish for you
Safe from life’s stale platitudes
Pedestrian, repressed attitudes
Of settled normal life
Not for us the terrestrial,
Quotidian, unexceptional
For we have dared to soar
Among the dreams
Of something more
Yet from my own perspective I must say
Not a second would I dream away
For there is no dream that can compare
To my everyday… with you
©J. R. Sinclair 2013
I have great admiration for your work.