David Hockney|Photographic Drawings

In the photographic drawings Hockney turned the camera against a single-point perspective. "Ordinary photography is too flat," he said in 2015. Because "each photograph has a vanishing point", a picture built from hundreds of them has many, and he called the results "3D photographs without the glasses".

The studio pictures of 2014 and 2015

Hockney returned to Los Angeles in 2013 after a decade painting landscapes in East Yorkshire, and began painting friends, assistants and visitors in his studio. The paintings came first: of his card players he said that painting them "helped me work out how to photograph them". 'A Bigger Card Players' is based on Cézanne's paintings of men around a card table, with Hockney's own painting 'Card Players #3' hanging behind the sitters. In 'Perspective Should Be Reversed' the title is written on the table itself, with "especially in photography" added by hand. Five of the photographic drawings were shown with new paintings at Pace in New York in the winter of 2014 to 2015.

Drawing in three dimensions, 2017 and 2018

From 2017 Hockney and his assistant Jonathan Wilkinson photographed the paintings, furniture and easels of the studio from every side, thousands of photographs in all. New software allowed him to place, light and move each object in three dimensions. 'In The Studio, December 2017' shows him standing at the centre of the room, surrounded by his paintings. 'Viewers Looking at a Ready-made with Skull and Mirrors' draws on van Eyck's 'Ghent Altarpiece' and Bruegel's 'Tower of Babel': onlookers circle a tower of trolleys topped by a skull, repeated in mirrors on the facing walls. In 'Focus Moving' the words "moving focus" appear four times in the background, turning round the title of his 'Moving Focus' prints of 1984 to 1987.

Before and after

The method went back to the 'Photographic Collages (Joiners)' of 1982 to 1984, in which every photograph stayed visible as a separate print. In the photographic drawings the photographs were stitched together digitally into a single picture. Hockney carried the idea into the 2020s: in '25th June 2022, Looking at the Flowers (Framed)', an edition of 15, he appears twice in front of twenty of his flower still lifes. Of that work he said that "you have to look at these through time (unlike an ordinary photograph which you see all at once)."

At auction

Phillips New York sold number 25 of 25 of 'Viewers Looking at a Ready-made with Skull and Mirrors' for $157,500 in April 2022. 'Pictured Gathering With Mirror' made $107,100 at Phillips New York in October 2022 and $120,650 there in April 2023. At Phillips London's David Hockney sale on 21 September 2023, 'Inside It Opens Up As Well' made £63,500 and 'Sparer Chairs' £50,800. In Hong Kong, Phillips sold 'Perspective Should Be Reversed' for HK$571,500 in October 2023 and 'Two Chairs With People' for HK$444,500 in May 2025. All these figures include fees.