Nick Knight

….Fashion is very tangible. It is easier to treat something internationally using images. You have to be careful what you say when talking about commercial projects because you might be implying that because I am getting money I am not allowed to say what I think, but that is not true.

Is there a difference between private work and commercial work?

What do you mean by private work? None of my work is private and all of it is personal. If you are implying you cannot express yourself when you are working for money, you are proposing that I might do one sort of work when I get paid and not when I work for myself. But I put the same amount of care into both. You are also proposing that I have a deeper feeling for something when it is not being commissioned by somebody else and that is not true either. Neither of these are true. This is classically how people think about photographers, that they do commercial work they don’t really enjoy doing, where they can’t say what they really want, and they do personal work where they can say things they want. That is not true for me. Every job I take on I do to one hundred percent of my ability and I have to believe in that. Christian Dior, Bjork, SHOWstudio and the others, these are all the things I believe in, and they are about communication just as if I was writing or singing, or if I was doing a film or a painting, it is just communication.

Say that you do projects for Christian Dior, and they give you guidelines or requirements: how do you express what you want to say, at the same time as fulfilling what they require?

Because they are just parameters for how to talk. You are communicating things. When you are photographing a woman, the physical height over that woman is important, whether you are looking up at her or looking down at her, because that is how people will see that woman. If I am looking down on the woman they will feel some dominance over her, but if I am looking up, you the viewer have respect for that woman. That is a very simple statement to make. But it is basic. If I shoot from below, that puts her in a position of some power. In a long-term campaign, a massive global campaign, this is interesting because in a small way, with that subtle modification, there is something political. Put an image of woman globally where they are empowered as opposed to being dominated. In that way I am empowering women. That is a statement of how I feel about women. As against having a global image of a woman dominated by the viewer. It’s a very small, subtle but actually very powerful step.