printer friendly version

Art In Review
Dafydd Jones
by Ryan Weideman
The New York Times, February 19, 1993

Heaven help you if Dafydd Jones fixes you in his viewfinder. Mr. Jones, a welshman who photographs for The New York Observer, specializes in deliciously cruel pictures of the social elite at play. In this delightful selection of pictures, he demonstrates an uncanny talent for making elegantly dressed people at glitzy parties look foolish.
In one picture, Brooke Astor and Iris Love appear with faces scrunched up like those of the dachshunds they clutch. Elsewhere, two women lean behind a beaming Chuck Scarborough to share a confidence. Leona Helmsley, meanwhile, is caught in closeup, mouth open in mid-jeer.
In taking unflattering pictures of people at parties, Mr Jones is continuing a noble photographic tradition whose practitioners have included Weegee, Garry Winogrand and Larry Fink. Mr. Jones goes about his business with cheery zest and a wicked eye. Sure, his pictures are unfair, but so is life, as the sight of all these people so conspicuosly and expensively enjoying themselves makes clear. Mr Jones carries off his duties as social satirist with admirable skill.