Across the generations: following the flood of images

In a photographic career spanning six decades, Albert Watson harnessed his artistic training to set the standards for fashion photography and celebrity portraiture with a prodigious portfolio of perfectly framed and clearly defined images. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1942,he has shot more than 160VogueandRolling Stonecovers and numerous personalities including Andy Warhol, Alfred Hitchcock (famously holding a dead goose by the neck), Steve Jobs and David Bowie. In 2019, he took on thePirelli Calendar, featuring Gigi Hadid and Misty Copeland among others, and his recent work includes shows in Seoul, Toronto, Hamburg and London.

I was at college in Dundee [Scotland] doing a four-year art course. After two years, you had to specialise and I chose graph-ic design – you needed a craft subject to go with it and I chose photography. That was my first connection with photography.And pretty much right from the beginning, I was obsessed with it. Then I went to the film school at the Royal College of Art inLondon before teaching for a year at the University of London.In 1970, we moved to Los Angeles and that was my start in photography. So, I've been a working photographer for about 53 years.

It was fairly straightforward. I was in Los Angeles working as a photographer and I guess on the grapevine someone had mentioned that if you need somebody out in LA, you should try this guy. I got a call from New York and they asked whetherI could photograph somebody famous for Harper's Bazaar. I saidI could try. And it turned out to be [the film director] AlfredHitchcock. Just the way I did the picture, it was enormously successful and it basically, almost overnight, transformed a lot of the kinds of jobs we were offered.

I think probably the most challenging was [being the official photographer for] the royal wedding [of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson] in 1986. Creatively, it was straightforward,but it was very difficult to do because of the way they set it up – we were allocated 30 minutes and there were 11 scenari-os and the first scenario involved 63 people. You think aboutmoving 63 people around. The high point: it was nice to go toBuckingham Palace and get an OBE [an honour awarded by the monarch of the UK]. Many people are blasé about it, but I was old-fashioned and thought it was a very nice thing to get a call about that out of the blue.

Probably, when you look at it, graphics are written all over it.The pictures are fairly iconic – and I don't mean that in the sense of “My God, they're amazing”, I mean iconic looking. I've worked pretty hard to make the pictures that I do memorable.

I don't feel [there's] such a gigantic difference with the cameras – they're kind of remarkable now, of course, but you're still looking into a rectangle. The big difference, the difference that Ithink is phenomenal, is the computer – that changes everything.If you're a creative person, if you're a graphic designer, if you're doing fine artwork, the computer can transform your work, and you can decide either to use it or not. It's another tool.

I'm on it every day and I have been for 14 years. Two Photoshoptechnicians work for me full-time. I saw the possibilities of it and it suited my psyche – I think because of the graphics – andI was able to delve into it. I was very aware early on that there were a lot of potential pitfalls with a computer – it can make your stuff look very lightweight and cheap. But I had the advan-tage of 40 years' working with film and making prints by hand in a darkroom and I know when I've gone too far.

I'm not sure; I think there's always going to be kind of a genius coming along to counteract that. But it is hard. I've done a lot of talks to photographers who were not without success, they just weren't very successful. And I said, what you're not doing,you're not sitting down on your own in a room with a piece of white paper and analysing what your work should be. You have to work a little bit; you have to think about what your plan is.What are you going to do here? What's the story here? What technology are you going to use?

I have massive libraries, both in my studio and my apart-ment, and the shelves are packed tight with art books. I have everything from prehistoric art, all the way through the Renaissance, Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, to Modern paint-ers, to Pop painters. So, all of that; all art is inspiring. If I goto The Met [in New York] and look at an exhibition of Korean Pottery, I find that inspiring. I can find inspiration from all different quarters.

Discipline. I think discipline is highly underrated nowadays.Guys come by the studio looking for jobs in the system and have actually said to me: “I'm not sure if photography is whatI want to do, I just want to explore it. I'm only 31.” You know,which is incredible. Only 31!

Well, I'm always interested in seeing new work. I don't care if the person is 20, 40 or 60. I'm just very interested in what's happening, what's coming up, what's around.

One of the youngest photographers to shoot the Pirelli Calendar – and the man behind the lens for the 2024 edition – Prince Gyasi brings a fresh perspective to the discipline. Inspired by his upbringing in Ghana, his distinctive artistic approach has lifted him to global prominence at the age of just 28.

I had a camera, but to me the iPhone was even better at the time. I was trying to convey a message to young people and telling them that it's not about the tools, it's about your mind. You can convey a message through any medium, as long as you have the message right.

I think about the concept, I think about the ideas, I do the set design, we build the set, and then I just pick up the right frame based on the message. And we just go on set and we work. After that, it's like cooking. When you're cooking, you're adding more ingredients here and there to make sure that you achieve what you're looking for.

Maybe people who want to dive deep into photography will have the right answer for that but for me, I want to make art and I want to be an artist, so I'm just using a camera as my medium. At the end of the day, I've created a bridge between painting and photography. I'm satisfying people who love photography, I'm satisfying people who love painting, so I'm kind of creating a new bridge, which I won't call just photographs; I call them art pieces.

It goes back to the bridge between photography and painting. The use of triangles, the way I use space, composition, the narratives, the tones.

It's texture. Messages. The subjects. The set. The set is the most important thing. And there are so many things that add up to that. Like a chef will say “I can give you the ingredients but I can't tell you how I make it, until you are actually there”. So, I just wish people could be on my set.

I want to touch on misconceptions, to change the narrative for Africans and for people of colour, and to cover messages of truth – to tell the story as it is and not twist the story of what I see. For me, the major thing in the beginning was education, now it's more about correcting historical misconceptions through my art.

We still kind of go back to it, we're still using film cameras and new companies have built a bridge between analogue and digital. So now you have a mixture of both if you need that feel. I love both of them. I don't want to choose a side.

AI is in most of the software that we've been using since I was a kid but it's more about the etiquette of it, like, what are you using it for? Are you using it to doctor images that are not true, or are you using it to achieve a creative goal? So, I think it's in between, it's about who gets their hands on it. There has to be a code written to govern and limit any negatives coming out of it. I've seen some of my people… like, one of my brothers, Kendrick Lamar [the rapper], did a video The Heart Part 5, which is on his new album: Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. They used AI and there were a lot of deep fakes to depict or convey the message that he was going for. But that's a good use of AI, you know? That's not a negative use of it. So, at the end of the day, it comes down to etiquette.

Music. God. My mum. People around me. Community. Art. Fashion. All the talents in my Calendar inspire me. Some musicians, like, shall I say, David Bowie, Francis and the Lights, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, some of my friends – all these people inspire me. And some sports people, like LeBron James, Ronaldo, [Kylian] Mbappé, [Marcus] Rashford, [Paul] Pogba… it's a mixture of everyone. I'm a diehard Manchester United fan. It's important you add the “diehard” because that means I will do anything. Since I was a kid, I've loved Manchester United.

Patience and consistency. When you look at figures like Naomi [Campbell], she's not in my generation but she's still here, you think that she's just started. So, I've taken that from other generations, and when you're on set you still need patience to be able to achieve the piece that you're going for. There are a lot of cameras that can even take 10 seconds to load up, so you need that patience.

I think any new generation that's coming up has the opportunity to look at the mistakes already made and correct them. I think they're gonna have more creative freedom too, which is what we're all seeking. Creative freedom is being able to speak without using your voice. You see my work. I don't have to be there in person, right? You have, like, a thousand [thoughts] in your head, and you think it's me.