231027 Collection Digital Cover 1 - Flipbook - Page 14
“When I first broached the idea of being
a photographer, my Dad really thought
I was crazy. In fact, he wouldn’t talk
to me for a year.”
Rankin
Firstly, why do you work across so many different disciplines –
photography, film, magazines, books, production and now you
have an advertising agency?
RANKIN
I came from a working-class family who didn’t know anything about
art. When I first broached the idea of being a photographer, my Dad
really thought I was crazy. In fact, he wouldn’t talk to me for a year.
However, if I hadn’t been brought up in a family that encouraged me
to be inquisitive and follow my own path, I would never have picked
up a camera in the first place. So, when I first started, I had no
influences, I was like a blank canvas.
When I got into college, on the first day of term at the London College
of Printing [now the London College of Communication], I walked in,
and they were handing out magazines. I went up to ask if I could have
one, looked at it, and asked the person handing it out “who had made
this?” It was so sophisticated. “We did,” was the response, “and you can
come and do it too.” Up until that point, I thought the people who made
magazines had to be from an elite group of people. My mum and dad
referred to the people who made things in the media as “they.”
But from that magazine – it was called Succession – it was really
apparent that “they” could be me.
Consequently, all through my time at college, I studied photography
in parallel to making student magazines. My theory was that whatever
happened, I would have an understanding of what commissioners
wanted. In a way, that introduction to publishing put the kibosh on my
art career. Up to that point, I thought I wanted to be a documentary
or art photographer. But the understanding of how to make magazines,
and actually get my photography into the hands of an audience,
was far more seductive.
12
R
So what happened to your art career?
R
If you look at my work, and I mean the larger body of my work,
you’ll see lots and lots of conceptual art ideas weaving through
everything, but especially my fashion work. Back then, in my very naive
student brain, I thought I should choose a genre of photography that
was incredibly seductive, i.e. fashion and beauty. Then I tried to put my
concepts and ideas into that type of work. I was very influenced by body
politics and those artists, but I wanted my medium of communication
to be broader than the art market. You see, back then, the art market was
very small. I thought it was too narrow and I was also young and excited
by the idea of being the Richard Avedon or David Bailey of my generation
– both of whom worked as if they were artists, in a commercial world.
R
It sounds like you just wanted to work in a job where you could be in fashion
and all that goes with it!
R
Well, I kind of did and to be really honest, for a while I probably did think
I was God’s gift. But the ideas were always there and at the same time,
I’ve never felt comfortable just doing fashion photographs. I need to make
ideas to really feel satisfied with the work.
