The Theatre Within
Lost Time is a kaleidoscopic retrospective on the career of legendary photographer Jonathan Becker. In extracts and images from the book, he reflects on a legacy that is nothing less than a cultural record of the past 50 years.
By my late teens I was fascinated with the Rolleiflex twin- lens camera. A simple, fixed lens refined over decades, it seemed the perfect instrument to interpret the eye’s field of vision. I became convinced this elegant tool could translate lived experience into photographs that mattered.
New York in the early 1970s was my classroom. I haunted Broadway when I should have been in school, photographing streetwalkers and strangers, then printing carefully in the basement darkroom of the writer Christopher Cerf. There I discovered my vocation. My sanctuary soon became Elaine’s, the uptown restaurant where writers, artists and misfits gathered. Elaine Kaufman adopted me as “the kid”, granting me entrée to a world of accomplished adults. That spirit of improvisation — turning distractions into art — has informed my work ever since.
Paris beckoned in 1973. I arrived at Harvard summer school by way of Colorado and found myself drawn to a course on Surrealist and Dadaist movements. Though I flunked the class, my paper on Brassaï reached the master himself. His reply changed my life: “You have well understood and expressed the spirit in which I made my photographs.” That validation gave me permission to believe I could do this work. Soon I was at his Montparnasse apartment, welcomed by Brassaï and his wife into a lineage that stretched back to the birth of modern photography.
Back in New York, I found work with W, and my box of early prints caught the attention of art director Jean-Paul Goude. He was magnetic, theatrical, and he pushed me to see pictures in heightened dimensions. Another formative figure was Bea Feitler, the design visionary of Harper’s Bazaar and Rolling Stone, who became my mentor. Bea introduced me to Diana Vreeland, who in turn opened the door to André Leon Talley. Each encounter was a passport deeper into the world of magazine culture, where photography was treated as theatre.
Jonathan Becker: Lost Time, edited by Mark Holborn, is published by Phaidon, £79.96 (Phaidon.com)
