Loving Light
Essay for Brian Griffin, Autobiography, Vol II (2020)
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ― Plato
If something or someone is unique it means that it or they are one of a kind; unlike anything else. It either is or isn’t. It’s not relative—it can’t be rather unique.
Brian Griffin is unique. The work is singular. You’re not reminded of a half-dozen other photographers when you look at the work. He is a story teller, a truth-telling fabulist. He’s no snob. He values and celebrates his origins in England’s Black Country. He is a problem solver and he can tell a story in a few strokes.
Like lightning.
He likes business and has had a long career, many times putting that at the center of his work, but he doesn’t seem to much like busy-ness. His pictures aren’t fussy. Maybe he has a sense of existential minimalism, or maybe he is impatient. He does the job. He is a dramatist of the absurd, making little one-frame dramas of often silly situations. He gets right to it.
He lights his pictures in a discreet, yet recognizable and effective way. There always seem to be a mix of daylight and some key lighting from flash or whatever so that the central figures always pop a bit; some artistic Griffin legerdemain.
He likes fireworks, especially ones with crucifixes miraculously appearing as organizing graphic elements, and sparks, like the ones in the industrial works by Derby’s under-celebrated master of photography, Maurice Broomfield.
Brian Griffin and I are buddies. We have found ourselves in a number of unlikely places over the years: various odd airports, the quay along the river in Arles, an assortment of antique lecture halls in Bologna, a coach traveling to Crich near Derbyshire with himself at the microphone narrating the drive. He is such a star. It’s a shame George Hurrell of Hollywood is not here to memorialize him. This portrait above is so telling. It’s a little peacock-y. The light is lambent. Brian, with what seems to be an uncharacteristically stern countenance—although he may simply be in repose—his collar up dramatically, looks so serious yet vague. He has had the wit to celebrate himself with a drawn or painted starburst cresting effulgently around his head.
More lightning.
There is his signature blush of fleshy color—he likes that—almost black and white but not completely. (He does like red, too.)
And look at that hair. It is criminal; it's an English National Treasure and criminal.
Who is he channeling in this portrait—Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, Alain Delon or every male film star? And the whipped-cream soft flip in the center of his hairdo? Veronica Lake.
The song I was hearing when I began writing this was Noël Coward’s “Mad About the Boy,” but that’s a ball-less song about rapture. I am obviously a huge fan of the good doctor, but Brian is huge fun, and he has his cojones. He is genuine, not posh. You want to worship in his church.
That song gave way in my head to Orleans’ “Dance with Me.” Brian takes me where I want to go. Dr. Griffin engages me. I am transported.
Dr. Griffin–we can call him that due to honors a half-dozen years ago from the Birmingham City University for his lifetime contribution to the City of Birmingham. He has had an unusual career trajectory, with early commissions in the seventies from Management Today and iconic record album covers: Iggy Pop, Depeche Mode. He put Joe Jackson and his memorable white side-lace Denson winkle-pickers shoes in that light on the floor. He sees like that, capturing Dorothy in the Oz of rock and roll.
Back to that gorgeous and enviable head of snow-white hair. He doesn’t put me in mind of Alice’s White Rabbit leading us down some hole in Wonderland, but rather a much hipper Grace Slick wailing “Feed your head, feed your head.” He has worked a lot in music, making album covers and videos. He is a modern master; he is famous, if not by name then by his photographs, to more than one generation of music lovers.
Brian might have made a great theatre director, especially with dramas of the human condition: no angst, not despairing, but lightened and liberated by laughter. Lightness.
He does not want us in the dark at all but rather “waltzing in the wonder of why we're here.”
He is not afraid to put it all into the light.
© W.M. Hunt 2020