Hugh Hamilton

On January 16 I was privileged to photograph Mrs Candy Spelling for the cover of her new book Candyland. I also shot the author photograph for the book jacket and some portraits in various locations around the house. I am not allowed to reveal those shots until the book is published but it was a wonderful experience...the house! the wrapping room! Actually she called me back to shoot a luncheon she held for the booksellers of Los Angeles and then I got the whole tour tagging along behind them. Wow. Particularly loved the wine cellar with all the vintages lined up by year. And the bowling alley. And the doll museum. And she was just lovely. Seriously.

So....this week shot up and coming aussies Teresa Palmer and Ryan Kwanten for the Australian edition of Instyle magazine - Teresa is in the upcoming Disney film Bedtime Stories playing an english princess and Ryan is in HBO's Trueblood as Anna Paquin's brother. The location was a new restaurant in Venice called AK that was perfect, since I had to match my pictures to others that had already been shot in Sydney by Hugh Stewart...I wish I could post some pictures but of apart from the magazine not having been published yet, of course Teresa and Ryan have to approve what gets used. I shall of course try and get both of them for the Rosebud project but in the middle of a magazine shoot did not seem the right time to ask......

Since August last year I've been shooting a series I call Rosebud. The title comes from the film Citizen Kane, in which a journalist spends the narrative trying to find the meaning of Kane's last word "rosebud", which turns out to be Kane's childhood sled. All of us have seemingly meaningless objects we are carrying through our lives, objects that mean nothing to anyone else but symbolise a world to us. The person we once were can be found in the objects that person kept. To my friend Zoe it was the tweezers her mother gave her when she was eleven and with which she still plucks her brows to this day. To Steve Martin it was the hat he bought for his first magic act. I have just linked up with local Los Angeles charity Children of the Night to produce a book of this project for their benefit. It seemed appropriate to use people's childhood memories to help teenagers who have had their childhoods taken from them.