David Hockney|Twenty Photographic Pictures

'Twenty Photographic Pictures' brought Hockney's photographs out of his albums and onto a gallery wall. For years the camera had served his painting. He kept the pictures in albums of source images and daily life, which by early 1982 numbered about 120, and called them "scrap-books of travel memories plus ideas for paintings". Twenty were published as a portfolio, and the dealer Ileana Sonnabend showed it at her New York gallery from 1 December 1976.

Places and people

The titles name the places: windows in Santa Monica and Hollywood, a beach at Viareggio and the gardens at Herrenhausen in Hannover. Several pictures come from Hockney's years in Paris, 1973 to 1975, among them 'Jean In The Luxembourg Gardens' and 'Peter Showering In Paris'. Peter Schlesinger, the man in the shower, had joined Hockney's drawing class at UCLA in 1966 and became his partner and main model. 'The Pines, Fire Island' dates from August 1975, when Hockney spent part of the summer on Fire Island with Henry Geldzahler, a friend since 1963 and a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The camera still fed the paintings. In 1975 Hockney painted his parents from sketches and photographs taken on their visit to Paris, and 'My Parents' in this portfolio shows them in Bradford that July. The portfolio also includes still lifes, such as 'Still Life With Hats' and 'Two Lemons and Four Limes'.

Where it led

In 1982 the Centre Pompidou in Paris surveyed his photographs, and Hockney turned the camera in a new direction. Where each picture in this portfolio is a single frame from a single point of view, he began combining many Polaroids and prints into one image. These became his 'Photographic Collages (Joiners)'. "The joiners were much closer to the way we actually look at things, closer to the truth of the experience," he said.

At auction

In January 2022 a framed 'Peter Showering In Paris', numbered 54/80, made £8,568 including fees at Phillips London. At Phillips's David Hockney sale in London in September 2025, an artist's proof of 'Sur Le Motif' made £7,740 and 'Still Life With Hats' made £5,160, both including fees. A complete portfolio has made far more: in May 2018 an artist's proof set sold for $75,000 including fees at Millea Bros in New Jersey.