Don Bachardy Enter a
feeling, not
a gallery.
Choose a mood and the room itself answers — the light cools or warms, the air changes pace, and only the works that carry that feeling step forward from the dark. Everything else recedes into shadow.
Don Bachardy
A Life Captured in Graphite and Light Born in Los Angeles in 1934, Don Bachardy developed an eye for the human presence that would define much of his seventy-year career. His training took him from the Chouinard Art Institute in his home city to the Slade School of Art in London, providing a technical foundation that favored direct observation over abstraction. He began drawing in his teens, driven by a fascination with the figures fou
nd in cinema and the people inhabiting the classic Hollywood era. This early interest in the moving image eventually translated into a disciplined approach to the sitting, where he sought to capture the essence of a subject within single, intensive sessions of two to three hours. In 1953, at the age of nineteen, his life became inextricably linked with the writer Christopher Isherwood. Their partnership lasted until 1986, and together…