The british photographer David Hamilton is found dead at his home – The Figaro

Accused of rape, including by the former anchorwoman of TF1 Flavie Flament, the man of 83 years, that’s his innocence, would have attempted suicide, this Friday evening, at his home in paris.

The photographer, and british director David Hamilton, aged 83, was found dead Friday night at his paris home, according to police sources, confirming information of Europe 1. Firefighters were called shortly after 20: 30 for an intervention at his home in the south of Paris and have found “a person in cardio-respiratory arrest,” said a source of the emergency services. His death has been found to 21h30 and medicines have been discovered close to the body, said a source close to the folder.

In his book Consolation, published by editions J. c. Lattès, Flavie Flament, 42, denounces the rape she has suffered through a photographer “world famous” when she was 13 years old. It does not say its name. But very soon, it has been circulated. On the site of The Obs, the former presenter of flagship TF1 has finally publicly accuse. “The man who raped me when I was 13 years old is David Hamilton”, she says. Two other women have subsequently claimed to have suffered the same fate. Alice and Lucy (the names have been changed) tell stories of how they have been approached by the latter: “When he proposed that we do a trial, my father was so proud, his eyes were glowing!”, recalls Alice. In the first trial, his father is confident. After remaining a few moments on the terrace, he goes and leaves her daughter alone with the photographer.

The publisher of Flavie Flament, Karina Hocine, has reported the comments of the moderator at the announcement of the new. “I had Flavie, she is devastated of course. We were told that it was a suicide. Of course, we are divided between the horror of the situation as a human and at the same time, there is a feeling of immense revolt because it has not left the time to the justice to do its work,” she added.

(Obs) finally reveals that a fourth woman may have been victim of similar facts in 1967, twenty years before the facts described by Alice and Lucy. This time the rapes took place not at the Cap d’agde but at Ramatuelle, in the house of the photographer. The girl was then 14 years old. Again, the limitation period is exceeded. The four victims now hope to see it happen to other testimony, this time more recent. The british artist has denied the accusations of the moderator in a press release. Anyone who has managed to impose since the 1970s the style “hamiltonian” based on the “soft focus” is “particularly outraged by the total lack of respect for his presumption of innocence”. He also stated that he “will not comment more fully the behaviors of criminals who are charged by some, and which it has never been the author”.

David Hamilton, now aged 83, began his photographic career in 1966, after having been artistic director for the Printemps department store in Paris. At the beginning of the 1970s, when the hippie culture was at its peak, the cozy atmosphere and bucolic in which it permeates its first shots is wonderful. Of all the young girls live from their nonchalant decorations, flowers and nicely blurred. The airy dresses that the photographer is married body barely trained. The silhouettes of a virginal slender evoke for some the naiads of a Boticcelli. For other – more mixed – the nymphets of Vladimir Nabokov.

It expressed regret “that they would not be able to take a photo of a young girl, (…) that it became a taboo in France”

The photographer recognizes find inspiration in the author of Lolita, which he says share “the obsession with purity”. He’s going to hunt down for two decades on each of his shots, repeating invariably the same designs in its dedication to the pursuit of an “age of innocence” fantasy. At the beginning of the years 2000, David Hamilton, however, less unanimity. To the careless gaiety of the 1980s followed a decade of the 1990s, is overshadowed by the cases of pedophilia. The same ones who praised the charming candor of his shots are detected now of lewdness, even of the perversion.

Him, who had fled from England very young to “escape the puritans” found new censors in France. To avoid any “misunderstanding”, Hamilton is content now to photograph flowers, renouncing nymphets which he adorned usually his shots. In the very wise exhibition devoted to it in the hotel Scribe ” (Paris IXe), in April 2015, visitors will discover charming still lifes. The photographer settled down expressed regret “that they would not be able to take a photo of a young girl, (…) that it became a taboo in France.” He reiterated that there was “a before and an after Dutroux”. The daily The new yorker who asks him if he has never desired his very young models, he replies: “there is a desire in my photos, of course. Art without sex does not exist. (…) But this is all in the head, these are fantasies.”