Reel Around the Fountain

David Hockney's non-collage photography should be better known.



Somewhere in the Oxford Public Library, there's a copy of a book called David Hockney: Photographs from circa 1982. It's unique in that it emphasises his earlier, underappreciated photographs rather than the famous collages he was beginning to explore at the time. Many of the pictures here are simply studies for paintings (portraits like Mr and Mrs Clarke and Percy, or just the surfaces of swimming pools). But there's a cool sumptuous beauty in many of the pictures, a sober 1970s moodiness that I'm drawn to.