Artwork
Biography
Born in Amsterdam in 1940, acclaimed photographer Dick Polak honed his craft as a camera assistant in the Dutch film industry. A true ‘free spirit’ of the counterculture, Polak moved to England in 1966, and tuned into Swinging London.
Embracing the philosophy of the ‘Happening’, which blurred the boundaries between art and life, hanging out more than shooting enabled Polak to capture the soul of the 1960s and 1970s. From Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ to Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance’ and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’, Polak was on set for some of the best movies ever made.
In 1968, Mick Jagger invited Polak to photograph ‘The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus’, where he captured some if his most iconic images of the time along side Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and Michael Randolf. Whilst working with Chris Blackwell and Island Records, Polak also shot sessions with Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Billy Preston and accompanied Marc Bolan & T.Rex and Cat Stevens on tours across Europe and the United States.
Polak’s legacy is an intimate portrait of some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.
“Dickie was around a lot in those days… Actually he was around so much he sort of became part of the scene of what was going on in rehearsals in the studio. Doing shoots with him was easy, he was just there and you never had to pose or anything.”
Steve Winwood
