Abstract
This essay goes beyond the identifi cation of photographic sources for specifi c paintings to explore, at a more general level, how Francis Bacon responded to photographs, and what this tells us about his historical affi nities. One useful model is the account Roland Barthes provided (in Camera Lucida) of the subjective ‘phenomenology’ involved in reading photographs. Bacon also recognized the inherent artifi ce of the photographic image, in parallel with his photographer/ painter friend Peter Rose Pulham. Several specifi c motifs and formal devices in his work around 1950 can more usefully be aligned with the innovations of recent and current photographers (notably Robert Frank) than with contemporary painting. The fi nal theme of the essay is the interplay in Bacon between the processes of feeding off photographs and embedding meaning, an issue discussed in relation to Untitled (Crouching Figures) and its derivation from a photograph that had appeared in Picture Post magazine several years previously.
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