Nick Knight Practitioner: 2013

Image Archive

An initial look into Nick Knight's fashion imagery archive.

This editorial which is one of my favourite pieces of imagery is what I think is the epitome of Nick Knights style of working and aesthetic.

Classy and elegant and showing the garment off to its highest potential.

Inspired Photographers

Nick Knight has always favoured in taking on new 'talent' in the forms of allowing his assistants to grow and learn from him. Having turned away Jeurgen Teller (one of the most commisioned fashion photographers in current practice) to Solve Sundsbo who's work is so unique it was once described as 'too weird but fascinating to be used in adverstising', Craig McDean and David Sims are two of the most successful practitioners laboured from Knight's practice.

Craig McDean

David Sims

As you can see - the aesthetics are very similar to those of Nick Knight's - with immense creativity and movement/ static of the garment's presented.

Image Methodology

'Susie Smoking' (1988)

Practitioners / viewers often wonder about Nick Knight's way of working, how he gets his inspiration and his ideas from. This particular notorious image came from working in collaboration with avant-garde Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto featuring the model Suzie Bick, the photograph was exhibited widely and notably, shown in the exhibition Out Of Fashion, at the Photographers Gallery in London, in 1989.

The image was influenced by Somalian art references such as her posture is mimicked by the rikka style Ikebana flower arrangements.

The image balances a formal western modernity with Japanese tradition and creativity.

Recognised Work - Gallery

Knight's work has been showcased within traditional galleries such as Victoria & Albert Museum, the Photographers Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and a huge permanent installation at the Natural History Museum - 'Plant Power' which was formed into one of Knight's published book 'Flora'.

Flora - using the photogram technique (hand-coated pigment print)

He gained access to the herbarium in the Natural History Museum in 1993, he spent 3 years going through thousands of plant and mineral formations, continuously photographing and printing these 'plant power' formations. He then whittled it down to 40 prints to form the exhibition Flora.

Knight took something tradition and realistically boring to view and with his technique and eye for creative visuals, turned them into modern contemporary art, by mixing colours with unusual patterns.

Knight's work has also been recognised within the contemporary art world, being exhibited at the notorious Saatchi gallery, and more recently the Tate Modern.

He was picked for Channel 4's art project called 'The Big 4"

>>CLICK HERE The Big 4<<

Showman

Aperture; Winter2009, Issue 197, p68-75, journal.

"Just as I'm leaving Nick Knight's London home he stops to show me a curious object. White, triangular, and about two inches thick, it's a section of his old studio floor: the accumulated mass of twenty years of painting and repainting for shoots. "Look at the layers," he urges me. "Most people went for white paint but there's a pink layer, there's a green one, there's blue. It's like geology!" This is emblematic of the photographer. One of the best-respected and most innovative fashion photographers of our time, he is fascinated by the process of image-making. He is also generously collaborative, has more than a touch of the scientist, and is extremely dedicated. Two inches of paint is an awful lot of shoots."

"-he's also well known for his technical innovation, pushing fashion photography to its limits and beyond. After discovering, experimenting with, and championing cross-processing -- that is, processing one type of film with chemicals normally intended for another type -- and acetate masks, he picked up on the manipulative potential of Scitex image-processors and Quantel Paintbox early on."

Shooting Naomi Campbell for Yohji Yahamoto - "I got her to move around on a shiny piece of white Plexiglas with flashes in the background; it's a red head, which is a tungsten light in front, so that when the flash went off it froze her silhouette, and the tungsten light blurred the image inside that outline. Naomi put on a tape Prince had given her. Witnessing the whole thing was amazing. Just this girl in a red coat dancing to Prince: it was such a vision. But then I thought: "No one is going to see this, people will just see the 1/125 of a second, and that's such a shame because I've had a ball today. I've seen the best live visual art I can imagine."

Then it occurred to me that a still image wasn't really the best way to show fashion, because designers create pieces of clothing to be seen in movement."

Reading his interviews is so inspiring, you can visualise his thoughts of the progression in his photographic aesthetics, how he moved from pushing that one idea to the impossible edge, which naturally leads onto the next bigger idea.

Interview

Within an interview with Motilo magazine, the interviewer Cressida Meale she asked him where his influences and references came from.

>>CLICK HERE Motilo Magazine Interview<<

"The desire I have when I am creating work is to open a door that I haven’t opened. A room that has been walked into is never as fascinating as one that hasn’t. So, of course, I reference everyone from Weege to Avedon or Dali. All were intelligent people having a conversation and all of them were solving problems that I have to solve myself. They were all about communication and a desire to see something and bring it into a visual reality. It is interesting to look at people’s work in that way but ultimately the excitement is in doing something new."

What I personally love about Nick Knight is that he constantly wants to change what has been done, always something new, something exciting, making him one of thee most contemporary fashion photographers.

Contemporary Pioneer

Its safe to say that Nick Knight is a pioneer in contemporary fashion photographic practice, but how do we define 'contemporary' - the dictionary says - "belonging to or occurring in the present: the tension and complexities of our contemporary society. - following modern ideas in style or design"

"theres no point doing anything that already exists." quote from Nick Knight within the book by Charlotte Cotton, 'Imperfect Beauty'

always pushing boundaries to the very edge
almost impossible

A fashion pioneer is constantly pushing boundaries to the unexpected, 'restless innovation'.

"Nicks is to realize a vision that is unique and almost impossible in short he took risk looking for beauty in the most unexpected places” - Charlotte Cotton, Imperfect Beauty, curator.

"Photography is about an understanding of the world around us. It's a series of questions and no answers and that is just as it should be. I'm quite happy for it to be all the shades of grey and no black and white. I don't think that should be simplified. Simplification in life is totally wrong."

Nick Knight, The Independent, 21 October 2006.

Knight doesnt call himself a photographer anymore, he refers to it as an image maker, times have moved on, its a new medium which needs a new referring name!

"Photography is dead."

"There is a new medium, but we keep on trying to describe this new medium by the old medium that is photography. Its backward looking, in references themselves no longer mean anything."

Just as you cannot classify fashion photography as photography, you cannot class fashion film as film.

Through the launch of show studio Knight has become pioneer in fashion film. Moving image is where photography is heading, why have a static image when you can have moving images of the garments the designer is selling? Film can reach consumers within seconds of being uploaded online reaching a wider audience than targeted.

In an interview with Imran Ahmad for the Business of Fashion Fashion Pioneer's series, Knight quotes; -"The technology is there, the technology is waiting for us to catch up with it."

CLICK HERE >>Business of Fashion, Fashion Pioneer Interview <<

Now Knight is exploring his curiosity with the technological advances in 3D scanning.

First 3D fashion film 2000 - 12 years ago

First 3D scanning in the process...

Latest 3D fashion film 2013.

Stills from this amazing shoot. Advertising campaign for the Lane Crawford Spring Summer 2013 collection.

Diversity

Nick Knight is one of the few top fashion image-makers using diverse models within his personal campaigns, as an ambassador for All Walks Beyond the Catwalk he strives to achieve diverse beauty ideals within the fashion industry.

Constantly pushing the notions on beauty from race and gender to disability such as the well known American athlete Aimee Mullins.

He photographed Aimee in the editorial 'Re-Imaginging Doll' as though to pose the question why do dolls have to have 'perfect features'? Aimee is beautiful even though she doesn't have the lower half of her legs.

This is why Nick Knight is known as a contemporary photographer as he poses issues and questions within the industry but with subtly and without the cliches that some contemporary photographers present.

He's known for causing controversey within the media about beauty ideals. Take his image of Sophie Dahl in 1997 for iD magazine. It was like a taboo to use plus size models for fashion editorials. Sophie Dahl was only picked for the cover of British Vogue magazine almost 10 years after Knight's shot was published. It took the 'traditional' industry 10 years to catch up.