2010, from Autobiography, in my iPad application Horvatland
My daylight studio had been a longtime dream, which didn’t come true until the end of the ‘80s (in fact during the very last years of my fashion photography). It allowed me to obtain exactly the light I wanted, which had been only faintly prefigured by my flashes on wheels in the ’60s, or by the light boxes I had cobbled together for Vraies Semblances. What I had in mind was the light of the Dutch masters of the 17th century (such as Vermeer), which came from a combination of windows to the north (i.e. not letting in any direct sunlight) and dark walls. This produced soft shadows of varying intensity, that changed according to the relative positions of the observer and the subject. My new studio, built above the one I was using before, has been completed in 1987. It has a bay window of approximately 10x3 meters, and all its opaque surfaces – the walls, the floor and the ceiling – are black. Contrary to what many people believe, daylight, when absorbed by dark walls, can make the bright surfaces onto which it falls seem all the more luminous. The lighting effects vary in the course of the day and depend (almost as in the Dutch paintings) on the position of the objects, of the observer and of the reflecting panels (which are mobile, tilting and so easy to handle that I can work without the help of assistants). Of course this is only true as long as there is enough daylight – which is the reverse of the coin, and which makes me depend on the time of day, the seasons and the weather.