Lid Magazine – Issue 5 – July 2007

Lid Magazine’s latest edition features 32 pages of my work. A small selection of the shots they chose along with the article text and the cover are reproduced below. (To avoid confusion please note that this limited edition magazine comes with three different covers by three different artists – all three covers can be viewed on Lid’s site)

Lid Magazine – Issue No. 5
Sam Haskins by Joseph X. Burke

Since the advent of photography, artists within the medium have faced a unique challenge — a challenge to utilize a mechanical device to actualize their artistic vision. Within that context, an invisible distinction exists between true photographic visionaries and those who merely interpret what has come before. With the publishing of “Five Girls” (1962) and the subsequent “Cowboy Kate and Other Stories” (1964), Sam Haskins began a career that would make an indelible mark on photography forever.

Born November 11 , 1926 in Kroonstad, South Africa, Haskins spent his youth intrigued by kite making, magic tricks, and the circus, which when coupled with his predilection for athletics, would eventually yield him a job offer as a trapeze catcher. Following a general arts program at the Johannesburg Technical College, Haskins moved to London to study at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts. In 1952, having returned to Johannesburg and marrying Alida Elzabe van Heerden, who became his business manager, he began his career as an advertising photographer. It was at this point that Sam Haskins began his departure into the visual realms that birthed his experimentation with in-camera multiple exposure, montage, film grain, and studies of the female form.

As a creative deviation from his highly disciplined career as an advertising photographer, Haskins, in 1962, published “Five Girls” with the help of his wife, Alida. A testament to his do-it-yourself prowess, the shoots were produced with five models under a tight budget yet yielded images still referenced for style and substance to this day. For Haskins, not only did it mark his first foray into published endeavors outside of advertising, but it established a discernible tone easily recognized in his subsequent works.

To create the desert scenes of “Cowboy Kate and Other Stories” (1964), Haskins’ venerable masterwork — and possibly the first creative black-and-white photography book to explore film grain as medium of expression and image design — mine sand was carted into the studio from dumps on the outskirts of town. “Nothing was too much trouble,” Haskins states. Without local ancillary support for photographers, the diverse roles required for production were filled by friends, immediate family, and colleagues. “The story line called for a weathered steer skull in a desert setting,” he says. “It was not the kind of prop you could buy in a local store, so we manufactured one.” After purchasing a steer head from the local abattoir, they took to the necessary processes on the rooftop of the studio over the next several days — “A malodorous exercise that did nothing for our popularity with the neighbors.”

The book, recently reprinted by Rizzoli Press (New York), tells the photographic narrative of Kate, a brazen gunslinging beauty of the American West. The stunning black-and-white images weave together the oft ~romanticized saloon gunfight between our protagonist Kate and a scantily clad rival.

The scenes of the story, later including her arrest, imprisonment, and subsequent escape (leading to the dramatic conclusion) are photographed utilizing a variety of creative photographic techniques and complex lighting arrangements. For instance, early on, a notable candlelit scene depicts Kate dressing amidst a wash of high-speed film grain. Pages later, Kate, riding her bicycle to the saloon beneath layer upon layer of silhouetted cowboys, shows one of Haskins’ more apparent uses of multiple exposure in the book. Looking beyond the technical mastery, Haskins manages to create an enduring depiction of style and sensual eroticism; his models coyly flaunting their natural beauty unabashedly.

Following “Cowboy Kate,” which won Haskins the Prix Nadar in France in 1964, his name gathered international acclaim and led to several further publications of varying subject matter. In 1966, he publiShed “November Girl,” a work making free use of image montage that later inspired surrealist experimentations in the 1970’s and 80’s. He broke bones whilst traversing river rapids in pursuit of “African Image,” released in 1967, his visual homage to the indigenous culture of sub-Saharan Africa. Haskins’ first color publication, titled “Haskins Posters” (1972) contains what is regarded as his most famous photograph – a girl’s face superimposed on an apple with a bee near the stem. Pages of the book could be removed from its soft-glue perfect binding and hung as posters. The book was awarded the gold award by the New York Art Director’s club.

In addition to the Prix Nadar, Haskins was given the unprecedented honor of shooting and art directing fifteen of the annual Asahi Optical (later Pentax) calendars. No other photographer had been invited to contribute more than once. Haskins’ international esteem undoubtedly led him to photograph “Photo Graphics” (1981, winner of the Kodak Book of the Year award) followed by “Sam Haskins a Bologna” (1984) – having been invited by the mayor to photograph the city – and subsequent photographic homages to the city of Barcelona (1991) and the Kashmir region (1992-1994).

Sam Haskins and his wife Alida are now living in the Southern Highlands’ of Australia. Following the recent reprinting of “Cowboy Kate and Other Stories: Director’s Cut” (October 2006), a retrospective of Haskins’ work was exhibited by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. In addition, as part of the Rare Photo Books auction held by Christie’s of London in May 2007, one of three original maquettes of “Cowboy Kate” fetched a staggering $75,000, the highest price of all the lots in the sale. While still accepting fashion assignments, Haskins is now focusing on book production, publishing weekly updates on his blog and exhibiting the works of his career spanning five decades — introducing itself to new eyes, inspiring new ideas and reaffirming old ones.

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