Bob Carlos Clarke


Robert "Bob" Carlos Clarke was a British-Irish photographer who made erotic images of women as well as documentary, portrait and commercial photography.
Carlos Clarke produced six books during his career: The Illustrated Delta of Venus, Obsession, The Dark Summer, White Heat, Shooting Sex, Love Dolls Never Die, and one DVD, Too Many Nights.
He is "often referred to as the British Helmut Newton". His work is held in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Life and work

Carlos Clarke was born in Cork, Ireland and educated at more than one English public school. They included Wellington College, Berkshire. After school after a gap in Dublin working in various low level positions at advertising agencies and newspapers as a trainee journalist and a brief spell in Belfast in 1969, Carlos Clarke moved back to England in the latter half of 1970 and enrolled in Worthing College of Art in West Sussex.
By 1975 he had made the move to Brixton, London, and enrolled in the London College of Printing. He later went on to complete an MA from the Royal College of Art in photography, graduating in 1975.
He initially in 1969 or 70 began photographing nudes as a means of making money; using his fellow students as models he shot for Paul Raymond Publications, Men Only and Club International.
Carlos Clarke's first encounter with photographing models in rubber and latex was an experience with a gentleman called ‘The Commander’, a publisher of a magazine for devotees of rubber wear who had contacted Carlos Clarke to shoot for his publication. Allen Jones was a good friend of Carlos Clarke. His work drew heavily on fetishism and he advised the younger photographer to lay off the fetish scene.

Personal life

While at Worthing he met Sue Frame, later his first wife. Knowing that she was a part-time model he "knew he had to become a photographer without delay" and persuaded her to pose for him on a chromed 650 cc Triumph Bonneville. In 1975, a couple of years after this photograph was taken, they married at Kensington Registry Office.

Death

Carlos Clarke committed suicide on 25 March 2006.
He is survived by his wife Lindsey and their daughter Scarlett.

Publications

Publications by Carlos Clarke

Carlos Clarke's work is held in the following public collection: