[b. 1958] (Nicholas David Gordon "Nick" Knight) British fashion photographer
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It's a very dynamic medium. It's based by its definition on change. It's about that quick chop-change— in today, out tomorrow.
The Creative Photographer : A Complete Guide to Photography by John Ingledew
... for a photograph you’ve never rehearsed—in fact that would kill it. So what you have to do is go in there knowing that you have got to perform, and it’s a little bit like someone saying to a singer “OK sing a song now, straight away, come up with a melody, come up with a good catchline, on the spot, now! Fine, do it again, now!” That’s what I mean, you’re under that much pressure.
I think, really, you’re sucked into photography when you first start doing it because it’s a very easy medium to do. Most cameras are pretty good and you’ll get an image which is coherent and looks like images you have seen pretty much straight away. It’s not like learning something like sculpture or painting where you have to learn a discipline beforehand. You pick it up and it’s there, it’s easy.
l can use anything from a 10x8-inch camera to a photo booth. The most important thing is to get my message across.
I think photography has been wrestling with a burden of telling the truth, which I don’t think it was ever particularly good at.
It is very tricky now to really, honestly call yourself a photographer because a lot of what I do doesn’t adhere to the rules of photography. For example, with the introduction of digital technology and the more frequent use of that in the creation of the image, you are really not following the rules of photography any more.
