"I don’t give a f**k what anybody thinks about me…. I never wanted to be famous. Why? For what? So the doorman at Harrods can recognise me? What I care about is what my kids think about me, and what my grandchildren think of me – the fact that they think I’m a genius is delicious."
- Brian Duffy.
Known to friends and colleagues by his surname alone, Duffy was a rival and contemporary of David Bailey and Terence Donovan. This “terrible trio” as the British press had dubbed them, were the innovators of “documentary” fashion photography, a style which revolutionised fashion imagery and furthermore the fashion industry.
Beginning his career at Vogue, Duffy made his name in fashion and celebrity photography and went on to become one of only a few photographers to have shot two Pirelli calendars.
Few celebrities of the 1960s and 1970s escaped Duffy’s lens, which created memorable and sometimes iconic images of sitters including, David Bowie, Jane Birkin, John Lennon, Blondie, Sir Michael Caine, Jean Shrimpton (The Shrimp), William Burroughs, Sidney Poitier, Terence Stamp, and Christine Keeler - whose scandalous affairs, famously almost brought down the British Government.
In his time after fashion photography, Duffy pursued personal projects inspired by the works of Paul Strand, Robert Frank, and Walker Evans, experimenting with beauty in the apparently banal. Later on, as Duffy grew disdainful towards the vicious world of contemporary advertising, and drastically tried to burn his negatives at his London studio. Thankfully his neighbors complained about the smoke, halting the arson and subsequently saving much of his work.
Duffy died of pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 76 in May of 2010.