Who is the 60s Vogue Photographer John Cowan?

When John Cowan was employed in an advertising department for a large company in the sixties he hadn’t spent much time thinking about Fine Art having previously worked in his dad's car rental company. 

He was going to go on and become a leading fashion interpreter in England during the 1960s.  His fashion photos focused on a dynamic style of fashion photography outside the studio. John’s first portrait for Vogue came after 1959 and as a consequence he started to shoot more fashion work. In 1962 he worked with a model called Jill Kenington who became one of his favorite models.

John loved the unpredictable aspect of working on location and the fact that he got a lot of fun and energy out of working with the danger that he courted, particularly doing some rather reckless things out in public.

He tapped very easily into the freshness, energy and vitality of the new culture consumers of the 1960s.This really transpires in his images, as you can see there's a lot of movement style he juxtaposes Jill in front of very tall buildings. 

Whilst shooting in the studio has its advantages, I can see why he might have got a thrill of shooting without having control over his surroundings outdoors. 

Shooting Vintage 60s Look In Bath, England

With great British Summer weather, I can't see why anyone would not want to get out and shoot in the street!  

Bath is one of my favorite places to shoot and combining a 60s look was a good shout. Here’s how I got on! It was blazing hot outside in Bath. I think this turned out to be the hottest day of the year. What I love about shooting in Bath is the surroundings, the beautiful architecture and there are so many different places where even if you move the meter or two down the road you’ve not only got a different angle, different perspective that you can shoot from.

We got started in the bright sunlight shooting with Portra 160 on the Bronica Zenza ETRS. We started after the bridge and shot this beautiful set with Artemis wearing her sunglasses over her head and then holding onto her earrings.

Love the floral print, beautiful vintage style look in the context of classical Bath. Staying in the same position just got Artemis to change her positioning slightly. I love the way that her arms are pointing towards, slightly away from the camera. You can see again a nice little triangle on the right arm and then also another triangular shape with her left arm over here.

Looking into the distance adds to that element of mystery in the image itself. Shooting in direct sunlight with a subject or a client or a model, can be very challenging. It was an extremely hot day and by the time we got shooting in the morning it was already 30°C.

We decided to go and find some cool shade around the area so we could carry on shooting and not get hampered by the conditions that we were in. We found these wonderful little corridor underneath the bridge with a little bit more cool air blowing through and we shot a number of shots here.

I love the way that Artemis is holding her arms up, great positioning with the legs, the body looking into the distance. Especially with the juxtaposition of the columns in the background.I think this came out really really elegantly.

I decided to get inspired a little bit by John Cowan here, although Artemis herself was not getting dynamic, I certainly was! I found an area which I could just climb onto and I thought well let's see how a shot would look if I shot downwards. Remember if you're shooting from above looking down on someone you are going to shorten their profile! I love the way that she is looking towards the camera, almost a look of are you really going to shoot from there. We shot a few more frames in this position before walking on and finding a spot to cool off, catch a drink and then start shooting again. 

After a little pitstop here in the afternoon. Artemis had changed into this beautiful red set and conveniently we had some red chairs and tables in this café so we ended up taking a few shots here which I think came out really well. I shot through the plants that were there, trying to find something different. I felt a little bit of a Parisian look in these images themselves. A couple of good captures.

My favorite set came in late afternoon as the sun was starting to go down and we got this nice little golden light coming through. Artemis had changed up into this 60s outfit, so we decided to walk around and find some spots where we could shoot without too many people lying around in the background and try to create this element of interest and mystery in the context of the modern era so to speak.

How To Find Inspiration For Your Photography

Here I think this is where it comes useful if you have read around different topics regarding fashion photography in the 1960s in particular.

If you look at peoples works such as David Bailey or even John Cowan. You can look at how they were shooting, what they were doing, where they were shooting, how they were styling their models and what kind of images they were getting through their cameras.

The other thing to consider is who you are shooting with. You've gotta find somebody who really wants to recreate that vibe that look and is able to bring that into reality.

As I suggested in my last video it's all about communication. The more you communicate with your subject, your client, your model in advance the better the quality of the picture is going to be. 

Back to the Vintage Shoot 

Here we started off in the shade next to his columns.  Trying to get again the background with the buildings and getting the foreground, getting a feeling of the textures in the column and the pavement itself, as well as the cobble roads.

I decided to go a little bit closer and get a three-quarter length shot with Artemis looking into the background and twiddling with her hair.

We then moved into the central area and I'm not sure how this happened but literally there was no one walking around except for a few people and again Artemis is standing in the middle of the road, this cobbled road no traffic coming through. 

I think the reason for that is because they close off all these roads so no cars are allowed to come down here anyway. 

I love this look with the hair down looking with a bold pose into the distance. Decided to change it up again got  Artemis to sit on a step and look into the distance. Great use of triangles in her legs but also in her arm work as well. This is why it is so important that you are shooting with somebody, especially if it is a model, that they know how to get into those positions just inherently. That will help you to capture some wonderful images too.

Slightly more laying down look, that hippy sort of look that you may have imagined in your mind or seen from very old photos from the sixties. The other thing to consider here, take into account the little additional details. Artemis is wearing the sunglasses, she's got the necklace, she's got a ring on her right hand and all these things add that extra dimension, extra texture to the image itself.

We moved to this wall and what I really liked about it was the two columns on either side and this natural frame being created by what would've I imagined been a door or a window frame there in the past.

Get look and pose here with the arm straight down and one hand up holding the glasses. Something out of John Cowan's textbook perhaps with Artemis with her arms out. 

Perhaps if she was jumping, it would've been a little bit more reminiscent of his work. Regardless I like that deadpan looked directly through the lens of the camera, which is really cool.

Then a more kind of chilled vibe that you may have seen before some of the old photos from the 60s. 

As the light was going down we did some walking through. Here I was shooting on Portra 400, which I think in hindsight was a really good choice. 

I really like this because the leading lines go through in between the buildings themselves and you can see Artemis pretending to walk into the distance.

Another shot of her car looking back as if someone had called her and that kind of expressive look, the movement of the body from all the way from the top, the head positioning all the way down to her foot slightly lifted off the ground.

I just had to get a shot of Artemis sitting down here, there was no traffic, so it was a very safe thing to do. 

I suppose this is not very dramatic in John Cowan’s Dictionary but I really like this look. It is a very chilled relaxed capture with Artemis having a seat on the ground. 

For this image, I decided to shoot from below looking upwards and that in itself helps to dramatize or increase the length of the profile as you can see from this image. 

It also transfers the power of the image to the model in the frame itself. I think this is a very bold image perhaps not as often seen in the old 1960s photos. We finished off with this really relaxed chilled look sat on the side of the window frame which I thought was a fitting ending to a very enjoyable and fun shoot with a wonderful talent

What is Fine Art?

The Oxford dictionary defines Fine Art as forms of art, especially painting and sculpture that are created to be beautiful rather than useful.

The latter part got me thinking. Useful.  What is the use of photography?  

What is the use of any form of art?

I think if you're thinking about it from a purely objective perspective then artwork isn't useful in the sense of helping you with something specific, in a practical way in your life. However I think this definition is a little bit narrow because usefulness can be defined in many different ways. 

Useful economically,  useful in your day-to-day life, useful in helping you to understand something.  What is it referring to? What is this useful utility that's been referred to in this definition? 

It may be useful to the person who might purchase that piece of art,  that photograph.  They might see it as a piece of investment which they can hang on their wall and then maybe even sell on at a higher price later down the road.If it's something that they're investing in. It might be that they hang it on the wall because it represents or helps them to see the world in a certain way.

But then why do we have galleries and museums which house all these different works of art over the centuries? 

Fine Art is a way of capturing how the world is living at that time.

For people to reflect on what they are doing, for people to see how as human beings we like to represent ourselves, depending on the cultural backgrounds, where we’re from and how we live our lives.

This in itself has many many utilities. It's useful to know what has come before so that we can improve on what's gone on before. It's useful because we can review and reflect and go okay. Is this something that we want to move forward with or do you want to adapt and change from what we have seen go past?

It might be useful for an artist to see what work has been done before and see how they can make connections between different types of work and create something new. A new way of looking at the world that we live in. 

I think that really this definition is quite narrow in many ways because it doesn't take into account the more esoteric dimension of looking at artwork and what value it might bring to an individual.  

We don't know what that person looks like in an image or painting or sculpture. What it might help to inspire in them and help them to create and contribute to the world we live in.

Do you agree or disagree with this definition? How do you define Fine Art, what does it mean to you? What is the purpose of Fine Art? Let me know in the comments below. In the meantime here’s another video to help you on your photographic adventures!