Nude Photo Better Than Bernhard’s? Fair Entrant Replicated Iconic Image

Story and video by Ken Stone

A handful of fairgoers recognized the iconic image: a naked lady reclining in a cardboard box. 

Wasn’t that the famous picture taken by Ruth Bernhard—called “the greatest photographer of the nude” by Ansel Adams? 

Yes and no.

It was a March 2013 recreation of the original 1962 photo—with a model uncanny in similarity but distinct differences in backdrop.

Coronado’s Adrian Torkington won honorable mention for the photo in Black and White People category and says: “It’s not a copy. It’s not a ripoff. It’s purely out of altruistic elements of photographic learning.”

Interviewed Friday while picking up his seven pictures displayed at the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar, Torkington said the photo grew out of a San Diego City College class assignment.

Instructor Melinda Holden had asked her students to visit the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park and pick three inspirational images.

He chose ones by Stephen Scheer, Depression-era photographer Jessica Lange and Bernhard, who died at age 101 in 2006. 

Torkington named his fair entry the same as Bernhard’s original—In the Box Horizontal. 

“Its visual impact was so strong that I couldn’t resist taking a stab at it,” Torkington said. But he thought Bernhard’s version was “lacking in clarity and contrast,” so he said he tried to improve on it.

“I wasn’t really happy with the [Bernhard photo’s] background,” he said. 

He made his backdrop jet black.

But Torkington’s is so like the original that it raised questions in some minds—was it right to enter a recreation of a photo?

Ron Ham, the photo exhibition’s coordinator, said he was confident that category judges Ian Cummings, Larry McDaniel, Michelle Karabelnik and Judith Preston were aware of the Bernhard image.

“All are professional photographers and/or teachers, and one, Judith Preston, teaches photo history and criticism” at Palomar and Grossmont colleges, Ham said via email.

Ham said he saw Torkington’s nude—featuring a 48-year-old local model—as a tribute to Bernhard.

“Fine artists do this sort of thing all the time in all media, and they’re aboveboard about it,” Ham said.

But James Alinder, a renowned photo historian who runs a gallery with his wife in Mendocino County, wasn't impressed, saying of Torkington’s image: “You only resort to this copying when you have no imagination of your own.”

Alinder said the Princeton University Art Museum has the  Bernhard estate archive.  Requests for comment were not immediately returned.

For his part, Torkington said he was surprised the nude was accepted, fearing it would be rejected as unsuitable for a family fair. 

But he entered six other images as well—and won first place in black and white architecture or cityscapes along with five other ribbons for honorable mention.

For the Bernhard image, Torkington said it took two sessions to get it right.

“It was far from easy,” he said, with lighting, camera angles and even distance from the subject challenging him and his Canon EOS 5D Mark III digital camera. He said he used Adobe Lightbox software to foreshorten the model’s face to evoke the original.

“I felt toward the end as if I was channeling Ruth and she was almost there—like ‘OK, now you’ve got to drop the camera angle down,’” he said. “It was almost like I could sense what she was going through.”

Alinder, the photo expert, said gelatin silver prints of In the Box Horizontal sell for $15,000 to $30,000, depending on the size.

Torkington, who was born and raised in England but has lived in Coronado nearly 20 years, put a price of $125 on his images—but said that figure doesn’t approach the actual costs involved.

“I have no desire to make commercial gain for it,” said Torkington, who is pursuing a photography degree after a career in business.

He said that if the Bernard estate doesn’t like the image, “that’s fine. … If Ruth would have been there in person [for the March shoot], I would have had to pay her a fee to teach me how to shoot this better.”

Citing the famous 1903 image of New York City’s Flatiron Building—imitated by thousands—Torkington denied approaching the Bernhard photo from a “plagiaristic standpoint.”

“It was art appreciation/creativity,” he said, and noted that “everyone [at San Diego City College] thought it was great” and said “go for it” as a fair entry.

Said Ham, who has been involved in the fair photo exhibit for six years: “It is not unusual for the Photo Show to hang artwork whose creator tried to stand in the shoes of Ansel Adams at Yosemite, for example, and try what he was a master at.”

Ham said a couple of fairgoers mentioned to him the resemblance of Torkington’s photo to the Bernhard icon.

“One of them thought she was telling us something we didn’t already know,” Ham said.