In the corridors of the Hilton Hotel, Christopher Bradbury was beaming with delight and being congratulated by Pete Bristo on the ultimate achievement – Fellowship of the MPA. “They asked me whether the category should be some- thing like Digital Montage, and I said it should be Surrealist Portraiture. It does not have to be digital – if we did not have digital now, I would be doing this in the darkroom. The way I started…”, he told us. We’ve featured Christopher’s work before – indeed many times, from his numerous Awards wins. Many of the pictures we show smaller in this edition have been used as covers or full pages previously, so we have tried to use less familiar shots larger. This submission was not without trauma. In the summer, he brought the portfolio for judging and discovered that a change in the rules made during the period of joint judging with BIPP had disqualified him. The new rules stated that even at Fellowship level, all the work must be from the last two years. In his case, this would mean never achieving a Fellowship. This kind of custom portraiture is not commissioned at the rate of one every month, nor could
When Christopher Bradbury submitted his work for Fellowship judging it had to be given a category. He decided to ask for a new one – Surrealist Portraiture. And so he became, in October 2010, the first ever Fellow in an art made practicable by the digital revolution.
he be reasonably expected to create a brand new body of work of this type in such a short time. The entire Fellow- ship judging panel and both the outgoing and incoming chairs of A&F Qualifications (Kevin Wilson and Desi Fontaine) agreed that the rule was non- sense. It made any long-term project, any lifetime body of work, even any documentary lasting more than two years impossible to enter. Christopher’s wasted journey and superb set of prints led to a change in the rules, revert- ing to the old standard where a Fellowship can be judged on the basis of a lifetime’s work if appropriate. In October, Chris’s portfolio was judged and passed. It is fitting recognition for one of the finest craftsmen and visualisers of imagery currently working in Britain.
Those who have read our past articles will know that Chris prepares models and sets, constructing elements to be used in the final photograph. This is not computer-graphic imagery; all the elements of the pictures are real, even though some may be on a smaller scale. Lighting is precisely replicated in terms of angle, hardness, fall-off, and colour so that two or more shots when merged
MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY 25
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