Portraits

Looking at these pictures now, it is hard not to think, a little bitterly, that Dmitri was fortunate to be working before the internet, the population explosion, and a thousand TV channels splintered our attention forever; but it is also clear that he has the rare ability—it is genuinely rare—to photograph any human being with sovereign insight.

Part of Dmitri's shtick (it almost looks like a shtick, these days) is an unassuming method: unobtrusive lighting, plain backgrounds, tones in the middle register … With simple means and an instinct for the essential, he penetrates his subjects' defences far beyond the remit of a magazine portrait.

Citation: David Secombe, The London Column

On this page: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kinga, Stanley Kubrick, Rainer Fetting, Cindy Sherman, Ken Dodd, Steve Martin, Germaine Greer, Micheal Caine, Barbara Kreuger, Francis Bacon, Edward Albee, Tom Baker, Paul Theroux, Liv Ullman, Mick Jagger, Spalding Grey, William Burroughs, Tom Stoppard, Richard Gere

Please click on each photo to zoom in.