I got in last night and ended up watching a programe following photographer Rankin as he recreated a selection of fashion photographs by the great names of the genre, Guy Bourdin, David Bailey, Helmut Newton etc...

I say recreate and not copy because, except for one or two of the pieces, he resorted to using his normal digital equipment which to me defeated the object of the excercise. The first one he did, a Cecil Beaton photograph, was actually made using similar lighting techniques and an 8X10 Large Format camera. He shot two frames on this of Sophie Ellis-Bextor popping her head out of a hat box, and then went back to digital. The results were very interesting as the film verson had a depth and mystique entirely lacking in the digital version. That's not to knock digital; they were both great pictures. The film version though had something about it that the digital version entirely lacked and it was very hard to see exactly what was the cause of this difference.

The greater discepancy for me however was how I felt about Cecil Beaton. I've never really liked his photo's but I know exactly why they hold an important place in the history of fashion photography. What always bothered me more was the knowlege that he had been sacked by Vogue for making a repulsively racist and anti semitic comment in a memo. When I first learned of this it made me like his work even less and I came to see him as an embodiment of the sly racism and arrogance that has always seemed to be threaded into the weave of upper class English society. Whatever my opinions of the man and his gross deed though, should it affect my opinion of his work? I like Degas, love his work in fact, but I'm also aware that he too was a racist of the worst kind and yet whilst I find the views of the man repugnant, I can still enjoy his work. Something in Beaton's work though makes me shudder. Is it because he was photographing haute couture when working class families were starving with no jobs, no welfare system and no NHS? Well, now I'm getting closer to the truth. The socialist in me is rearing his head and saying 'you stupid man! Photographing frocks while millions are living in misery!! You should be out there recording that. Telling the world what's going on!!!' But you know, I've also been guilty of photographing pretty women in nice frocks for magazines while many shades of awful have been visited on the world... And although I've also recorded many of those shades with my camera, it doesn't stop me loving fashion photography and embracing it as a primary influence like two of my heroes Gordon Parks and Frank Horvat once did. And that brings me back to the central question... What is my dislike of Beaton and why can't I divorce it from his work... I suppose that as much as I disparage Beaton for his racism, I too am guilty of prejudice. A prejudice against a class system that played Bridge and drank wine while millions lived off tins of butter beans for supper. A class system that is reflected in this manner in the work of another great photographer, Bill Brandt.

I got to like Beaton a little bit more when I saw this qoute from him...

"Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly."

I could imagine it being drawled in his hissy posh whine and it made me laugh.

But how can we divorce the art from our repugnance at the acts of the person... Is the creator so entwined with the creation that the two cannot be seperated? Can we value and judge something to be good when we know that the racism and sexism in their personalities are brushed deeply into its canvas?

Your thoughts please good people...