The Photographic Work of Robin Broadbent

Robin Broadbent is a master photographer, sought out for his exquisite still life photographs. An acute knack for identifying and capturing the glancing profile of an object is part of the character of his work, which abstracts the essence from contemporary brand and fashion advertising and then combines it with the universal photographic language of the 20th century avant-garde. The starting point for Broadbent is lighting, his end-point the printed image. He works with light to give flatness or depth to his images, he can make a building seem weightless or a small crater of powder epic in scale. Being able to play with our perceptions in this way recalls the early days of Surrealism and highlights the playfulness of his work. Broadbent uses a complex and nuanced language of color and scale, guile and humour, to play with our preconceptions of fashion and abstraction. The book reads like a magazine, and there is an undercurrent that emerges suggesting these images have a meaning more than the sum of their content. This undercurrent represents the essence of the fashion world now.