Christopher Broadbent

After studying photography and cinematography at the Institut Des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques in Paris, he started working in the world of filmography from 1958 till ten years later when he moved to photography. Known worldwide for his advertising photographs and television commercials, many of which became icons, Broadbent started then focusing on a more intimate dimension of photography. And after being in the world of communication, in the 2000s the artist’s new language became the still life.

Flowers, fruits, containers, cooking utensils and everyday objects are transformed into still-life, through a use that looks to the classic genres and becomes evocative. Photographic illustrator, by his own definition, Broadbent was inspired by the Dutch painting for the rendering of flowers, while metallic objects evoked a metaphysical still life. His masters were the artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from which he learned the way of treating light, and the light-to-dark effects.

The apparently random order of the elements was meticulously studied by the artist, who composed the scene by exploiting the room twilight and the light directionality from the windows. The light-dark effect suggested a third dimension of depth that recalled horizontal perspective layers and symbolic languages sedimented over time. Broadbent was a craftsman in using the darkroom, the optical bench and very long exposure times.

The task of the photographer was no longer just to capture the moment, the instant, but also to invent the image that would then become the subject of the shot itself. The composition finds space in the center of the photograph while the edges remain free to “give space to the shape”, as Broadbent says. The image appears essential, floating in time, waiting for an event to happen or for a conclusion.

Only in 2013 did he hold his first personal exhibition.