Friends of Motilo: Nick Knight
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Nick Knight
There is almost too much to say about Nick Knight. After more than three decades in the industry he has become the ultimate in innovation, everlasting beauty and still has the ability to shock. With startling clarity he manages to not only fully incorporate ground-breaking technology into his work, he pioneers it. The sheer gravitas of his continuously growing legacy would be impossible to attempt to summarise in any respect. Recently, Motilo have been privileged to not only speak to him, but work together in showcasing and selling some of his latest work.
The ‘roses’ are not only a fantastically beautiful piece of original photography in their own right, they are the starting point to a previously undisclosed project. Until now. Having been sworn to secrecy, bar a few leading statements, let us reassure you that what is to come later this year is truly astounding. Available to purchase now in collaboration with our good friends at SHOWstudio, this highly covetable composition will not be around for long. Email personalshopper@motilo.com for further information.
Nick Knight; Rose, 2008 - £15,000, email personalshopper@motilo.com
What made you want to rediscover and champion the still life?
Well, I didn’t start out to rediscover or champion the still life. I always had a fondness for the Old Dutch Masters and the 17th century tulip still life, but that wasn’t why I started photographing roses. I’ve captured lots of different things, lots of different ways. Nature and flowers is quite a nice change of thought pattern from photographing fashion. The beauty is already there and you don’t need to modify it. I don’t see it as a sort of antidote or a cleansing thing. It is just different and difference makes life exiting.
Was that why the roses really spoke to you? Is there any reason why they were the main focus?
They hold a sort of Victorian poetic tragedy. They are so beautiful and then they die. There is something fascinating in that, it makes life more beautiful when you know it is going to stop. The only tattoo I have is that of a rose. I’ve had that since I was 18.
You are very much associated with the contemporary art and fashion scene, what influences from the past do you look to, if at all?
In your work you look to every possible influence. Mainly our emotions are controlled by the future, not the past. Anticipation, envy or desire is directed by the future. I’m excited about what I am going to do next or who I will meet. The past is sort of safe and done and over. 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.
Nick Knight's 'rose, 2008' in situ at the SHOWstudio shop last year. To purchase simply email personalshopper@motilo.com
You’ve done so much in so many different mediums. What do you still dream of producing?
At the moment I am very excited by sculptural work. I’ve been working with 3D scanning, actually rather frustratingly for the past 12 years now, and I still haven’t been able to create the work that I want to produce. It is a tricky thing and there is a lot of new technology out there but it doesn’t take me quite where I want it to. I want to work with minerals; I collect them and that is one of my passions that I discovered with my son. We go off to Tucson, Arizona where there is a mineral work and gem fair. It’s incredible. They turn the whole town over to the showing of rocks and gemstones and each bedroom in every hotel becomes a little gallery.
In terms of the Somerset House exhibition, was it surreal to see so much of your work in one space?
It was strange because we had been working on SHOWstudio for nine years and it was a way of taking something virtual and making it into a reality. I’ve never liked that quality of the Internet, that it is the sort of place where nothing is tangible. So, Somerset House was the first step in trying to make SHOWstudio into a physical, tangible place with physical tangible work. I always found the Internet frustrating, as you don’t know where the people behind the websites are in the world and they don’t reflect any kind of physicality. The most thrilling thing for me was doing a twenty-day live performance. I spent most of December photographing people.
Did you have any favourites or any funny stories from those?
Probably photographing Lady Gaga. That was pretty phenomenal.
Feature continues below:
The interactive Naomi sculture at Somerset House
The public could actively participate in and customise the installation via the SHOWstudio website and drawing board at the venue
What was she like?
I’ve worked with her a lot. I did the Born This Way video and the album cover and all of her tour films. I’ve worked with her a lot. I even worked on the perfume and stuff like that, so I know her quite well but this was in the early stages of our relationship. She came to Somerset House to have her portrait done and she was supposed to be on stage in front of my camera at 12pm. Of course, all of her fans are incredibly mobile and connected to each other and they all turned up. So there were 200 people pressing their noses against the glass and I could feel them four feet behind me. Of course, she arrives at 12pm but is in hair and make up until 3pm, so by then they are quite excited.
It’s sort of daunting.
Live performance is thrilling and one of the things that I enjoy a lot. And Gaga walks up to the glass, which is a mirror from her side, and applies her lipstick, centimetres away from hundreds of adoring fans, like she is alone in her bathroom. The funny thing was that everyone records everything on mobile phones, and her face just lit up like the northern lights from all these little LEDs five inches on the other side of the glass. It was a beautiful spectacle and one of the most magical things I’ve seen. The circus atmosphere made it so in any case.
Nick Knight during one of the Live Photo Shoots at Somerset House
And how is she to work with? Is it collaborative or is it very much her vision?
There is no dictatorial relationship; I wouldn’t work in one, be it on my side or anyone else’s. I wouldn’t want to people to be telling me what they are doing or me telling them what to do. Any creative relationship I have is always shared.
What prompted you to set up SHOWstudio in the first place?
The desire to have a platform for fashion film. That became obvious to me in the early ‘90s. I’ve filmed every session I’ve done since the early ‘80s. Designers create clothes to be seen in movement, not as a still image. Therefore if you can see them moving, that is closer to the designer’s vision. TV is hopelessly chasing its own ratings and too busy scandalising fashion to take it in a serious manner and the art form that it is. The whole point of fashion is that it is a future based medium, so you can’t work with cinema. Then when the internet came along in the late ‘90s, there suddenly was a medium that you could upload short films to and it occurred to me that it was going to become a very important thing. We were heading into a new communicative world where you could stream things live, to thousands of people across the world, without having anyone fundamentally controlling what you are saying. Before, your art had to be approved by someone to have it viewed. I think the Internet allows artists to talk to their audiences and in some cases work with them. It is revolutionising contemporary art.
It is strange. People tend to need to have it justified to them. All you tend to see all the time, especially in print, is the bad side and the positives are somewhat overlooked.
I think we are just going from one system to another system. The older system has now lost the battle. It is quite clear when you change from one to another people get upset. I used to do a film for Dior, around 10 years ago. I had 70 people on my set and now I only need two people. So you’ve got 68 people who haven’t got a job now. When you edit the film, I don’t need editors. I don’t need someone taking it to a post-production suite in Soho. I do it on my laptop. Most people are not going to be happily out of a job. There is a lot of change going and people don’t always react well to change. The world is changing. People at 14 are picking up their phone and recording a film and sharing it with the world. TV is now completely scattered. People watch it on demand, rather than having it shape their evening. Fashion shows are being broadcasted online. These systems are changing. Journalists used to be sent to fashion shows to report, and then four months after the show, you would then see it through the eyes of those editors printed in a magazine. Now they see it as it walks onto the catwalk. It puts a huge strain on magazines.
Do you find that you are doing less editorial work now?
I still do a bit of it. In a way it is a good way to get new models in and new clothes as the system is still there. When we work with magazines now, they tend to agree to it being broadcasted online and we get the prints.
What kind of response did you have to the Lara Stone this weekend? It was amazing.
A very good response. It was an amazing shoot. Lara was fantastic. I just thought it was a really important thing to do. In part because I have two daughters and a son who are teenagers and I hate the idea of them being on the streets not being able to defend themselves. I think it’s the whole Slut Walk thing. Women should wear what they want and that shouldn’t subject them to abuse or rape. It frustrates me. Everyone should know how to defend themselves. Then I realised that those classes are usually done in gym wear but when you go to the theatre, or the opera, or a club you are usually in heels or a skirt or a floor length gown or a jacket that doesn’t allow you to lift your arms above your head. So I thought it was important to show women how to defend themselves when they are dressed up and at a time when you are at your most opulent. You dress up to be seen or to be watched, and more often than not that is the time when you are most visible and the time when you are most likely to be attacked.
It is so nice to see fashion being used to service a real need when people usually see it as such a decadent frivolity, it is treated with a lot of criticism most of the time.
I think we have a lot of trouble in Britain. Many in our culture see it as vanity, and therefore a sin. It is treated as something that is not admired in people, as it is a form of self-description, and the most basic kind. Any value of who we think we are is expressed through the way we dress. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that and I don’t know any society that doesn’t do that.
You are always so busy. Do you ever relax or is that a bit of a foreign concept?
It is a bit of a foreign concept. This is what I live for and what I really enjoy so the idea of stopping I find annoying. It irritates me that I have to sleep. I get exhausted and have to take breaks in order to keep going. I wake up in the morning and I can’t wait to get out of bed because I can’t wait to get to whatever project I’m working on.
Do you have a favourite piece of work that you have done?
The answer to that is that it is always the next piece, always the one that I am working on at the moment.
Do you have a favourite space, anywhere in the world?
With my wife. Anywhere with her is my favourite place.
In regards to the roses, how are you expanding on the series?
This is something I am bursting to talk about. It is a way of expressing in a non-figurative way the beauty that I see in the roses and the expression of them but taking away their form. When you see some of those roses, there are certain things that charm you and seduce you, but are they to do with form or colour? Deconstructing the form of those images is something I’m enjoying, and it is a reconstruction of a different way of presenting them. It is a change of form. It feels like it almost liberates the desire within them but it means I’ve got to go across to America for a couple of months and work on it.
When will we be seeing it, in a few months?
I shouldn’t imagine we would be seeing anything before the fall. I’ve got to photograph the roses over here and then go over to America to do the prints, and every print is hand done and unique. It is one of those techniques that I can’t control. It does what gravity wants it to do, not what I want to do. So I am super excited. I can’t give too much of it away but I can’t wait to do it.
- Cressida Meale
