John Claridge’s Afternoons Well Spent
Between 1989 and 2000, photographer John Claridge occupied a building in Rivington St where he set up his home and his studio. While pursuing commercial and documentary photography, John also took time to create the personal work which you see here during his long afternoons. These are just a few compelling examples from a continuous vein of endeavour that has extended throughout his long career.
John’s nudes share a paradoxical sense of mystery – they are simultaneously ethereal yet equally exuding a powerful physical presence that is vividly of this world. Often masked or withholding identity in some way, these women always retain self-possession and inhabit their own space – one which is mutable like that of a dream. A strange universe where a steam train can coalesce out of the miasma.
John respects the power of women in his photography, celebrating their beauty, paying homage to their softness and even fragility but also admitting their strength in body and spirit. Enveloped within their languorous rapture, they regard us askance with unassailable authority.
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
Click to buy a copy of John Claridge’s new book of photography AFTERNOONS WELL SPENT published by Cafe Royal Books today at £5
Take a look at
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)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Nine)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Ten)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Eleven)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Twelve)
and
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act One)
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act Two)
John Claridge’s Clowns (The Final Act)
and
and 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
Very mysterious and erotic images ! …. and I hope to see more.
Thanks.
Tastefully tasty
images that to me have a link with the ladies of the victorian east end , excellent
Wonderful & Mysterious erotic images.
Certainly a collection of faces that are very different from the boxers!
Beautiful.
The 80s and 90s. A great and very special time.
Lovely afternoons, John! Thank you.
Hooray! . . . now we know that JC’s lens can linger lovingly equally well on the contours of the younger and fairer sex (with apologies to the gravel faced former boxers, iconic clowns and the charred landscapes of what was once a proud world class East End).
What a treat! The way John changes his style when photographing woman in incredible. You could be forgiven for thinking it was another photographer. I really love the lady standing with the steam trains, what a contrast between the delicate lace and the steel machines. Absolutely beautiful.
Wonderful,amazing images John. I have always loved the way with great care you photograph the female form,and the black and white images stay in the mind
Here’s my hits of these delicious Misses, beauty numbers one, two.
five & eleven.
you may notice I have gone mostly for the unmasked – but still enigmatic
portraits, that’s excepting two and five, the first being solarized so you can only register
the silvery flash of the limbs as a fish turning in a running stream, the second [ 5 ] has only a
vestigal mask, or blindfold…almost a shadow across the eyes that, again catches the music of moment. The subject has such gentle abandon in her beauty and the opened pose face,body and limbs both, she is all there, all woman, unique and potent. You can sense the great held, drawn breath about to release as passion consumes every nerve end .The others are not erotic to me, but all have surrealist charm and strength, as if backstage on a set of ‘ Les Enfants du Paradis ‘ fine enough in that manner – just that, dawn or night I like my river au natural and though I love the reflections of light and lanterns in water,I shun the artificial decorationsof pleasure cruises , glitter or masks, visual or aural. Got any more Johnny?