[b. 1970] British fashion photographer
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The images are real in their own terms; that is what they are. As a fashion photographer, you are a documentary photographer within a fantasy land.
From the book: Photo-wisdom: Master Photographers On Their Art by Lewis Blackwell.
Photography is a bit like cooking: you take ingredients out of the cupboard and mix them up—old pictures, characters, colors, landscapes, to create something that is in your imagination that surprises you. It is all quite natural really how this happens.
As a child I loved picture books and at school I looked at fashion magazines a lot—they were comics of photography for me. Fashion photography seemed the only photography that allows you to express fantasy, romance, dreams, and escapism. You think of photography as being a tool to tell the truth, but in fashion photography there is a different kind of honesty.
There is a danger of being pigeonholed and then you don't get challenged. I would love to do more portraits and documentary. I did that at the Remembrance parade last November, just went down with a camera documenting the extraordinary people walking past. I would love to do more like that.
When you work commercially you can be pushed into situations where you do things that aren't quite right, but you do it that way because somebody is paying you money for that. It is very uncomfortable. So I largely don't try to make a real statement with the commercial work, it is a very watered-down version of what I can do editorially. Having an art director change this and change that and then you end up with something far removed from what is in your heart, you learn to give up and just interpret what the client wants. I tend to only put all my heart and soul into the editorial work and I only work with magazines where they will let me express myself 100 per cent. If you don't compromise it will make a better picture.
