Context.It's the word that comes to mind every time I think about writing one of these intros.What seems familiar today was once considered very left-field, risky or just plain crazy.Each pushes the peanut along for the next generation.Take the 1988 D&AD Annual, it’s hard to believe now, but all but one ad in the press and poster section had black headlines, the one that didn't was Graham Fink’s Metropolitan Police campaign.I was a generation behind Graham, so watched from afar as he and his writer Jeremy Clarke tried to push the peanut forward. They made ads taking the piss out of other ads, (Hamlet), they got England's Cricket Captain to stick two fingers up to the establishment after being arrested for smoking dope, (Hamlet again), and they were the first to blow a million pounds on the production of a single tv ad, (B.A.).I had a great chat with ‘Finky’, hope you enjoy it.

COLLETT DICKENSON PEARCE.

The Horry incident:

WIGHT COLLINS RUTHERFORD SCOTT.

SAATCHI & SAATCHI.

PART 2: 'THE JEZZA-LESS YEARS' WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY.

Taking good portraits isn’t as easy as it looks.The instant a camera appears people change, they stop being themselves and attempt to become someone else.Sucking in cheeks, arching an eyebrow or tilting their head to the preferred angle. Take a look at the profile pictures on Facebook, they look like they were taken a split second after someone popped a balloon behind them, or they've just spotted a long-lost friend from Junior School, surprise seems to be 'in' at the moment.The one thing they don't look like is those people in the flesh.A friend of mine recently took a picture of Giorgio Armani, before the shoot he was given the ‘Armani angle’, the one and only angle that he was allowed to shoot. The skill of a portrait photographer is to talk them down from this ledge and to just be themselves. Richard Avedon, one of the best portrait photographers ever, would sometimes ask his sitters this question a second before clicking the shutter; ‘what scares you?’. They would stop posing and start thinking. I can’t guarantee you that he used that technique on this bunch, but when you look at the expressions it's possible.

Unfortunately that technique isn’t very helpful when shooting album covers, record companies rarely want their artists looking like they’re mulling over the effects of a nuclear holocaust or pondering being caught up in a terrorist attack.Generally they want their artists to look authentic and cool.A portrait is a collaboration between the person in front of the camera and the one behind it.The key piece of equipment on this kind of job is as likely to be a bottle of Jack Daniels or a copy of The Beatles ‘White Album’ as it is a particular lens or a ring flash.Mood is everything.I don't know any photographer who make their subjects look cooler and more relaxed than Norman Seeff.I don’t know what he does, maybe he’s just a ‘great hang’, (as the kids say), but the people in the pictures look like there's nowhere in the world they'd rather be.His album covers capture people being the best version of themselves, whatever the mood.1. ECSTASY.

2. A PARTY MOOD.

3. A FUN MOOD.

4. A CHILLED MOOD.

5. A REFLECTIVE MOOD.

6. A SERENE MOOD.

7. A SERIOUS MOOD.

8. THE ‘YOU LOOKIN’ AT ME?’ MOOD.

Here's a few outtakes that give a sense of the relaxed vibe Norman creates in the studio.

Whilst putting together this post I noticed two things about Seeff’s albums:1.An incredible amount of them have hand written titles, my guess is that the art director is reflecting the humanity in the pictures. (Some seem to have an identical, idiosyncratic elongated style that I would imagine is Seeff’s hand.

2.An incredible amount of the albums featured another, even more relaxed portrait of the artist on the back, again I can only guess that the art director, when going through the contact sheets have found images they thought were too good to waste.

IMPORTANT: Norm, if you’re reading this; can we have a chat about how you do what you do for this blog? Also, if I ever release an album would you mind shooting the cover?

Nb. Norman has shot literally thousands of album covers, I couldn’t resist showing a few more.

Full disclosure; it's actually the 113th.But I noticed that when blogs or podcasts hit a significant number they do a kind of round-up, like a kind of house-keeping thing, so here’s mine.

10 THINGS I'VE LEARNT ABOUT BLOGGING.1. BLOGS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN. MAY 2002: My friend Paul buys me davedye.com. OCT 2013: I decide to bung all my old work on it, for easy access.NOV 2013: It’s a bit chaotic. Having presented the work in various creds meetings, I figure I may as well write down what happened with each campaign, the brief, the changes, etc.FEB 2014: I wonder why there isn’t there any of Tom McElligott’s work on the net? I write a post on him to introduce him to people who may not know him.(The first of 8 ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of’ posts.)MARCH 2014: Damn! It seems I didn’t give Pat Burnham enough credit in the Tom McElligott post, how can I make amends? Interview him!(The first of 35 interviews.)SEPT 2016: It takes me 10 hours to transcribe an interview I’d recorded with Joe Sedelmaier, Joe’s answers are great, but it doesn’t feel as accurate as hearing him laugh, swear or curse. Maybe I should’ve just put out the recording.JAN 2017: I put out first podcast; Tom McElligott.(18 podcasts recorded to date, 8 yet to be posted.)2. POSTS CAN HAVE UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES. A few months after I did the post on Tom McElligott, Bob Barrie sent me this:

Standing left to right are Mark Johnson, Mike Lescarbeau, Jarl Olsen, Dean Hanson, Bob Barrie and Tom Lichtenheld. Bruce Bildsten and Pat Burnham are seated. They're a large chunk of the Fallon McElligott Rice Creative Department, circa 1985. He said my posts on Tom and Pat Burnham had led them to get the old gang together for a reunion in Minneapolis, some hadn’t seen each other in a decades, Tom Lichtenheld flew in from Chicago and Jarl Olsen flew in from San Francisco.3. AVOID THE MAPS.

They're part of the tools you get with Wordpress, they help you see a post is performing globally, the problem is, if you're a curious type like me, they get you thinking: Not much colour in Russia, how do I reach more Russians? How do I make Asia more orange? Why are the coloured areas primarily English-speaking countries when Google could translate it for the others at a flick of a button? After a while the curiosity will fades when it dawns on you that you didn't start blogging to make friends in the Ukraine and have no idea how to reach them anyway.4. PEOPLE PREFER TEXTING, EMAILING, DIRECT MESSAGING, PHONE-CALLING, VIRTUALLY ANYTHING TO ‘COMMENTING’. My blog is hosted by Wordpress and shared with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Google+ and Tumblr, each have their own comments section. Some are posted there, but most are posted via phone, email or whatever. It's a shame they can't be aggregated and viewed by everyone in one place, because most of them really add something to the post, particularly those on individuals, the interviews and podcasts. I was going to attach a recent favourite comment* to this bit, so I searched through 'Mark Reddy: Podcast' on Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter and LinkedIn, as if to prove the point perfectly; I couldn't find it.(*It was something like 'Mark speaks so softly, it's as if he's near a sleeping child, traumatised child'.)5. NUMBERS ARE HARD TO PREDICT. Posts that take an hour can get three times the views of those that take months. A perfect example are the two Tom McElligott posts.a) 'Hands Up Who's Heard Of Tom McElligott?'. Essentially a bunch of scans and screen grabs plus a bit of text by me, I probably spent five hours on it. (https://davedye.com/2014/02/07/hands-up-whos-heard-of-tom-mcelligott/)b) 'PODCAST: Tom McElligott'. After the first post a lot of Tom's old creative department emailed to say thanks. Many asked whether I knew where Tom was.After leaving Fallon's with alcohol issues, he spent less than a year running Chiat Day New York, then set up McElligott Wright Morrison White, only to close it two years later. Not only had he not been heard from him since, no-one knew where he was. As I started doing more interviews I thought it would be great to interview Tom, so I began making calls and emailing. 'He was last spotted in Hawaii', 'I think he works at Minneassota Art College', 'Isn't he in New York?'. All leads eventually dried up. Cut to two years later: I get an email from a young creative asking for a book crit, (he said his Dad told him to ask me). When he turned up I noticed two things: he was American and his surname was 'Hanson'; ‘You’re not Dean Hanson’s son are you?’. He was. I told him his Dad had done some great work and some of it was on a blog about his old boss I’d posted. He said he'd seen it. 'Your Dad’s not in touch with Tom is he?’.‘No.’ Of course not. Another dead-end. Damn! That’s that then.Cut to three months later: I get an email ‘My Dad said try this number’. I didn’t know what he meant as the email said no more than that. A few days later, before I’d had a chance to phone this long shot, Pat Fallon died. I put off phoning the number, on the off-chance that it was Tom's, I thought it'd look like my call was linked to Pat Fallon's death, like I’ve just remembered him after the death of his old partner.I wrote the phone number in a notebook and put it to one side.A few months later I remembered it. I dialed the number, the fact that he’d disappeared, had a drink issue and didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone anymore made me apprehensive. No answer. I tried intermittently over the next month or so, nothing. I had another go: ‘Hello?’. Rather than being the angry, miserable aggressive guy I feared might answer the phone, he couldn’t have been friendlier and more cheery, he seemed to me like the Jimmy Stewart’s character* in ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’.(*If you’ve seen the film, I’m talking about the Jimmy Stewart at the beginning or end, not the one in the middle). After a series of calls and emails Tom agreed to be interviewed. He wasn’t being difficult, he just didn’t know what a blog or podcast was. Sometimes I wouldn't get a response to an email, the following week Tom would say ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t look at my computer last week’. Eventually a date to record was agreed.I turned up at Wave, dialed him in, his wife apologetically informed us he was still at the dentists. We rescheduled. Finally, we recorded, 2 hours and 45 minutes.He couldn’t have been lovelier, more candid or happier; 'Ask me what you want, I haven’t spoken to anyone in the last 25 years, I don’t plan on speaking to anyone in the next 25'.It's difficult to estimate the hours it took to get there, if I said it took five times as long as the previous post I'd be massively underestimating, but if I said it took more I'd start questioning what I'm doing with my life.[audio m4a="https://davedye.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/dave-dye-a-conversation-with-tom-mcelligott-with-intro-090117-export.m4a"][/audio]So, here are the numbers for each:

The first one got about 38,000 views when it was posted in 2014, the majority in the first month.The second has got roughly 2,800 views to this point, 9 months into 2017. (Weirdly, the first one has been viewed more in the last six months than the podcast; 4,300 views.)Why are the first numbers are so high and the second's numbers so low?I get to the same place as I do with the maps; I'm interested in the numbers but not driven by them, I'm driven by curiosity, I got to ask Tom McElligott every question I could think of for nearly three hours.5. HUMOUR DOESN’T ALWAYS TRAVEL WELL. I don't know whether it's a British thing, an irony thing or a me thing, but often the intent doesn't transfer.Eg 1: I asked DDB legend Len Sirowitz was ‘who's your favourite Len; Bruce, Bernstien or Fairclough?’ ‘I'll ignore that’ he said.Eg 2: I found a picture of Gerry Graf standing next to a very old guy and couldn’t resist putting the pink spot on the guy next to Gerry.

So far four people have told me that they were surprised how old Gerry was, ‘especially given that his work is so fresh’.Eg 3: Researching Dave Trott I found out that the first ad he got into D&AD was credited like this:

I couldn't help title the post 'David Troff Interview'. A lot of people shared the post on Twitter, attached were messages like 'Check out some cool work by British Creative David Troff'.6. NEVER PUT OUT A PODCAST OUT WITHOUT EDITING. It sounded like such a good idea. a) You put out a real, warts 'n' all genuine conversation. b) You don't have to listen to yourself wang on for three hours and worry about how you sound. c) You save time. Three minutes of dead air in the Peter Souter episode changed my views. (We went for a pee.) There's another benefit to editing, it's allowed me to capture and weed various slips of the tongue; someone slagging off their current boss, another criticising their friend, one even said 'advertising isn't as good as it used to be', nobody wants to go on the record saying that out loud, so he asked for that to be taken out. (After a while spent wrestling with RSS feeds, the podcasts are finally up on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stuff-from-the-loft-creativity/id1265125334?mt=2)

7. SCRATCH YOUR ITCHES.A lot of posts start with Google searches, I’ll look for a particular reference and won’t be able to find it, along the way I’ll discover there’s barely any work of Tom McElligott’s, Alan David Tu, Howard Zieff, Jeff Stark’s or whoever. Irritated at this slap in the face for creative people who should be better known, I’ll try to change that situation with a blog post. I remember Lester Bookbinder being the most stylish photographer from my early days in the business.He was the kind of photographer I could never have worked with at the time, he was crazily expensive and super picky about who and what he worked on.A Sarson's Vinegar layout from a 23 year old art director at Cromer Titterton was never going to break through that wall. He was truly world-class, just below Irving Penn, (like everyone else).He was one of the busiest, most admired photographers from the fifties to the nineties, working for agencies and magazines across globe. He must’ve shot tens of thousands of images over those fifty years, less than a dozen images would show up on Google. That just doesn't seem right. It’s a bit like finding out that Tarrantino shot a film between 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' that didn't get released or that Lennon & McCartney recorded a bunch of demos in the spring of ’79 that have just been sitting on a shelf for years. You'd have to look for the bootlegs, wouldn't yo? Personally, they are itches I'd have to scratch. Lester Bookbinder's lost work was another itch. Searching for Lester's work lead me from tiny black and white picture of a Management Today cover in a 1968 D&AD Annual to Haymarket's archives in Twickenham in the hope I'd find and scan a few covers that may not have been seen.I discovered and scanned 45 magnificent covers, here's one of my favourites.

The covers stimulated everyone from Nadav Kander to Tony Kaye to comment how amazing Lester's covers looked today. (https://davedye.com/2015/07/16/lester-bookbinder-1-the-management-today-covers/ )

8. DON'T TRY TO PREDICT PEOPLE'S ANSWERS.Here's my favourite, Brian Griffin's unpredictable answer to my totally predictable question:

9. BE FRIENDS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE BEST SOUND STUDIO AROUND.Obviously it's a big ask, but it really helps.So thanks again Parv, Wazza, Harry, Aaron, Jenn, Rebecca and the good folks at Wave.(http://www.wavestudios.co.uk/)

10. NEVER MAKE A TOP 9, IT SOUNDS SILLY.While I've got you, you don't have Charles Saatchi's email address do you?

The Wieden years.It’s weird, I only interview people whose work I really like, but whenever I lay their work out end-to-end, I’m always surprised at how much better it is than I'd remembered.It could be that there's much more of it, the sheer consistency of it or that it appears better with the benefit of time and a bit of distance.All three are true of the work in this post.Tony does a good job of shining a light onto how they produced it, hope you enjoy it.

VISIT WALES.

NIKE. (RUN LONDON).

HONDA.

YAKKULT.

NOKIA.

AIWA.

CRAVENDALE.

FISK.

KAISER CHIEFS.

NIKE.

THE GUARDIAN.

SKYR.

LURPAK.

FINNISH.

THREE.

CHAMBOURD.

TK MAXX.

SAINSBURY'S.

Obviously there’s more Fred & Fabien, but probably the most interesting things in there are the bits of old typesetting I rescued from the Leagas Delaney bin.The studio was going all digital, so PMT machines, drawing desks, wax machines, art-workers a and bits of old setting were dumped.I managed to save a few bits of setting, if you eat a lot of carrots and have 20/20 vision you'll be able to spot a few cut marks between some of the characters.

The arc of most creative agencies tends to be very similar; start idealistic and creative, become less principled and duller over the years as the realities of finance, earn-outs and fatigue start to kick in.Adam & Eve are like the Benjamin Button of ad agencies.They started burdened by the financial realities due to a situation called 'Sorrell'.Having come through the early sensible years they seem to grow more creative as each year goes by.They won no creative awards in their first year, they've won more than anyone else last year, they're currently top of the Gunn Report, their 10th year.Ben Priest has overseen their creative journey.We had a great, very candid chat, hope you enjoy it.[audio src="https://davedye.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Ben-Priest.mp3"][/audio]

SIMONS PALMER DENTON CLEMMOW & JOHNSON.

COLLETT DICKENSON PEARCE.

LOWE HOWARD-SPINK.Olympus Cameras.

Reebok.

Vauxhall.

TBWA.Thomas Cook.

Playstation.

RAINEY KELLY CAMPBELL ROALFE/Y&R.Virgin Atlantic.

ADAM & EVE/DDB.John Lewis.

Harvey Nicholls.

Marmite.

Skittles.

H&M.

When I write these posts I sometimes forget that not everyone reading them was working in advertising or design 20 years ago.After the last post a lot of people asked me what the hell I meant when I said that the green book shouldn’t be called ‘Type’, it would be more appropriate to name it ‘The Fred & Fabien Files’.It was a joke, so much of the work in that typography scrapbook was from the same two guys.FRED WOODWARD was the art director or Rolling Stone; One of the cleverest, most playful art directors ever. The way linked the typography and imagery was revolutionary at the time.FABIEN BARON was the art director of Vogue Italia, Interview Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar; Probably the most stylish magazine art director of the last fifty years.Both influenced everyone in the business back then, their influence can still be seen today, I’ll probably do a post on each at some point.Anyway, more ‘Fred & Fabien Files’, enjoy.

Amongst the 100 top selling albums last year were 8 dead singers, (Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, Roy Orbison, Amy Winehouse, and David Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Leonard Cohen), 5 dead bands, (The Beatles, Bon Jovi, Abba, Queen, Oasis), and 19 greatest hits albums of music recorded in the last century.
It wasn’t always this way.
The introduction of the Compact Disc changed music buying habits from only buying the latest release to buying music from any point in history.
Video and DVD did the same thing for film.
The internet did it for virtually everything else.
The reason I drag you through this history lesson is to try to explain that there was a time when people didn’t have the ability and consequently the interest to look at back catalogues.
So, in 1988, when a super-hot director, showed me his prized u-matic commercials shot before I was even born, it was weird.
But they were magical.
The Director, Nick Lewin, laughed his way through the reel, a reel he’d presumably seen hundreds of times.
The Director of these old ads was called by Howard Zieff, and when you look at them again here it’s easy to see why.
It’s the sheer humanity.
And humanity never goes out of fashion.

Here’s what I know about Mr Zieff.
He was born Howard B. Zieff in Chicago in 1927, (October 21st.)
He then grew up in East Los Angeles, the Boyle Heights section, where his stepfather ran a club where neighborhood men played cards.
He attended the Los Angeles Art Centre.
He was enlisted into the Navy in 1946, pretty soon he became a staff artist on the Navy News, before being sent to Navy Photographic School.
Navy Motion Picture School was next where he shot his first film was ‘Day In The Life Of A Cadet’.
“I learnt the basics in the Navy; what a pan is, what a tilt is, how to strip a camera, how to print and develop film, I got an education if film opticals that was better than any photographer’s assistant could’ve ever had.
But aesthetics, the Navy weren’t interested in.”
When he left the Navy he decided to go back to The Los Angeles Art Centre to study photography, becoming a newsreel photographer for a tv station in Los Angeles upon leaving.
In the early fifties, Zieff moves to New York hoping to find work as a television director.
Out of work and knowing few people in a new city he spends every afternoon in local cinemas.
Running out of money, he takes a job as a photographer’s assistant for ‘a guy who put together Ford catalogues.’
When his boss refused to raise his $45 a week salary, he quits, investing his entire savings, $200, in a loft above the Belmore Cafeteria.
(GEEK-FACT: It can be seen as the cafeteria of choice by ‘Taxi Driver’ nut-job Travis Bickle.)

He starts shooting for local companies, specialising in people.

This leads to more prestigious advertising jobs

He starts long term relationships with magazines like Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s and Esquire.

He starts to get a reputation for shooting that most difficult of subjects; kids.

His New York Daily News campaign gains him tremendous recognition

By the time he’s 25, he’s making $100,000 a year and has his own studio employing 15 staff.

The Lipton campaign for Y&R offers him a chance to demonstrate his lighting and child wrangling skills.

By the late fifties he’s shooting for the best agency in the World; Doyle Dane Bernbach.
Campaign’s like Ohrbach’s allow him to cast the previously uncastables.

Another DDB NY ad for Len Sirowitz and the Better Vision Institute.

He began shooting for Polaroid in the late fifties.
A relationship that would last nearly two decades.

Spoof.

The most famous work of Zieff’s career has to be Levy’s.A radical idea, particularly fifty odd years ago, beautifully shot.
“I shot many photos for Levy’s that failed.
They weren’t the kinds of faces that gathered you up when you went on the subway.
That’s what I wanted, faces that gathered you up.
The Chinese guy worked in a restaurant near my Midtown Manhattan office.

I saw the Indian on the street, he was an engineer for the New York Central.

The kid we found in Harlem. They all had great faces, interesting faces, expressive faces.”

The campaign went ‘viral’ before the term viral, being referenced and spoofed across culture.

The Utica Club campaign allows Zieff to perfectly replicate the America his grandparents.

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A Zieff Christmas card from the sixties.

In the late sixties Zieff moved in to the former Grolier Club at 29 East 32nd Street.

He shot many VW ads, primarily for the station wagon.

The Sony ads he shot for DDB, (yep, we’re still on DDB), are perfectly cast.

(Sony outtake.)

He starts directing, unusually for photographers turned directors, his moving stuff is even better than his non-moving stuff.
‘‘I never looked at them as a commercials, to me they were mini movies.’’
This meant he wouldn’t cast his ads ‘pretty’, ‘In those days everyone in tv ads were blond and perfectly proportioned; I didn’t want that.’
Instead he wanted real people in his castings, searching not just for a look but ‘a certain quality’ the actors had.
It was reflected on his sets too, he was like the anti-Norman Rockwell, demanding imperfection.
That could mean cigarette burns on a coffee table, the plug socket overloaded or a button on a shirt that had come loose, no detail was too small in his search for realism.
It has also been said that Zieff was the first commercials director to treat the actors like actors, to let them do their thing, not the usual cliches of the genre.
Bill Bernbach said ‘he casts like no-one else, he makes you believe it like no-one ’.
At the time he was feted as ‘The Fellini of commercials’ and ‘The master of the Mini-Ha-Ha’, it meant he was getting budgets of up to $100k in the 1960s.
He told New York Magazine at the time; ‘I will only produce a commercial that solves a problem for me – for my ego, or my aesthetic needs or if they’re fun.’

(I have to give a shout out to Vinny Warren and his crew for sourcing the bulk of these ads.)

In the early seventies he switched to movies.
They were all big name productions, but aside from ‘Private Benjamin’ and ‘The Dream Team’ not films I’m aware of.
(I may try one or two, possibly ‘Slither’ or ‘Hearts Of The West’, I’m probably not going to give ‘My Girl 2’ the benefit of the doubt.)

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He passed away in 2009.
(Possibly the only grave stone with an ad carved into it?)

Nb.

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GOD’S LIGHT.
It’s what photographers call daylight.
It was Freson’s light source of choice.
It’s obviously less controllable than other forms of lighting but the results can be magical.
It can can give people a luminous, spiritual glow.
At a time when so many briefs are to make the people in front of the camera look real, authentic and believable, it’s odd that we generally drain the colour from the image, add filters or use artificial lighting.
Go through Robert’s images below you’ll see the images positively radiate with life.
Yet feel 100% natural.

So here’s what I know about Mr Freson:
He survived Germany’s occupation of Belgium, then, in 1947, left for Switzerland to study photography.
He then took his master’s degree in photography and and brand spanking new bride to live in the United States.
He dropped his portfolio off at mecca of fashion photography Vogue.
Only a few a few days later he received a telegram inviting him to work under Irving Penn, at that point*, probably the best photographer in the world. (*Possibly at this point too?)
He stayed learning his craft from Penn for the next 13 years.
Here are a few of the portraits he took of his boss.

In 1962, he left Penn to go it alone, but rather than still life or fashion like his mentor, he chose photojournalism.
In the sixties he was very in demand, he seems to have shot virtually anyone famous in the sixties; from Sophia Loren to Dwight D. Eisenhower to Salvador Dali, basically everyone.
He also shot ads, notably Whitbread for Colin Millward at  CDP in London and the Jamaica campaign for DDB in New York.
For the next forty years he kept two studios, one in France, one in Carnegie Hall.
In the 1970’s he moved into food photography, his book ‘The Taste of France’ became a bestseller and is still sold today.
He’s still around, in his seventieth year as a photographer.
(Although I had no joy trying to get in contact to interview him).
ADVERTISING.

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THE TELEGRAPH MAGAZINE.

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ESQUIRE.

THE SUNDAY TIMES.

LOOK.

FAMOUS FOLKS.

ARTISTS.

A CAT.

SOME FOOD.

Robert today. (Or maybe yesterday…could’ve been the day before…)

Any photographers reading: Use the comment section, tell us why exactly is daylight so special?

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‘It’s REALLY special’.
I’ve worked on a lot of luxury brands over the years, and essentially that’s the brief you get.
You have to make buying the product feel like gaining access to a very exclusive club.
With nothing tangible to say you have to conjure up a personality from thin air.
It’s tough, you have to be very creative.
‘It’s not what you say it’s the way you say it’ as Bill Bernbach put it.Doyle Dane Bernbach did it a number of times, one that is often over looked is the Chivas Regal campaign.
Lots of products had loudly asserted they were the best, Chivas didn’t do that, it playfully toyed with the notion that you already knew they were the most premium.
At the time they weren’t seen as premium and they weren’t category leader, but the ads were so damn confident and cocky that you had to assume they were.
Here’s how it all started; Bill Bernbach, in what we’ve come to call a chemistry meeting, told potential client and Chivas Regal owner Sam Bronfman ‘I think I ought to tell you that I’ll never know as much about your business as you do.
How can I? You built it, you breathe it, you dream it.
But you have to understand I’m in a different business to you, even though it involves your product. And I know my business better than you?’’
‘‘You mean together we can do a great job? OK, you’ve got the account’’ Bronfman replied.
With a clear demarcation of who did what, DDB turned Chivas Regal into a a brand that was seen as premium and became category leader.
I found this account of how those early ads were written.

‘If I had to pick two locations where I had the most fun in advertising, they would be, One, the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Two, Charlie Pic’s office at 437 Madison Avenue. Charlie and I worked on the Chivas Regal account together.
I would lie on his couch and he would sit at his board drawing. He was a great
The way it worked was, I’d either throw out a line or he’d go pin a cartoon to his wall of cork.
If we both liked it, it stayed up overnight. If we didn’t like it the next day, into the trash can.
There was zero time pressure.
Once a year, we’d take the survivors, fully rendered as full colour photo comps, first up
to Bernbach for his blessing, and then straight over to the Seagram Building at 375 Park.
Home of Edgar Bronfman, or ‘‘Ed-God’’ as we called him.
We’d go to the Board Room and pin all the comps up around the room.
By that time we had 20 or 30 that we both really liked.
A stream of clients would then enter and walk around like it was a show at a hip Art gallery. And in fact, it sort of was. We didn’t hang one in the show we didn’t want to see on the back cover of TIME or LIFE.
We’d listen politely to all their comments, generally agreeing with them because it didn’t really matter.
We were all awaiting the arrival of Ed-God.
After a half hour or so, he would descend from on high. Lots of bowing and scraping in the board room. Charlie and I cool as two cubes on ice.
We knew the drill.
Ed-God would slowly stroll around the show, hands behind his back, pausing before some of them for a second look.
Then he’d say, ‘‘Okay, here’s what we’re going to do’’, and he’d walk around once more, this time with the head marketing guy in his wake.
He’d say, ‘‘This one, this one, that one…definitely that one, I love that one. Oh, and this one and this one…etc.’’ Until he’d picked twelve that he liked/loved.
He’d look at Chuck and I and say, ‘‘Thank you very much, gentlemen.’’
And that was that.
We head back over to 437 and put 11 ads, plus one Christmas ad, into production.
That was it.
We had a whole new year to think of more.
There is no better way to earn a living than that, and no better way to have fun either.’

– Ted Bell, Copywriter, Assistant to Mr. Piccirillo, Doyle Dane Bernbach.

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Where did you grow up?
The sleepy town of Sawbridgeworth, it’s on the Hertfordshire and Essex border.
When did you take your first picture?
There was no eureka moment, I inherited my grandfather’s Silver Ilford Sportsman.

I do remember being intrigued by its beauty; a matt silver finish with shiny brown hinged leather case.
I wore it across my waist in my early teens, but had no idea what I was doing with it.
It felt sophisticated, technical, way beyond anything I’d ever come in to contact with at that age.
It was the act of making that I enjoyed, rather than ever believing that I was making anything important.
I liked the idea of editing a scene through the viewfinder.
Most of the time it wasn’t even loaded, film was too expensive.
It was in a time when a roll of film had to last you the whole summer.What was your first job?
Express fruit & vegetable delivery man.
A white van man at 17, straight after passing my driving test.
Deliveries at extraordinarily dangerous speeds, I was compelled to drive as fast as I possibly could on every journey.
I went on to be a geologist, mainly because I wanted a job outside in the landscape.
How did you make the jump from white van man to photography bloke?
Was it a wise move? I tussle with this nightly, I might have had my own van by now.‍One thing is for sure; we didn’t operate six month credit schemes before you got paid.‍It wasn’t such a jump, photography was becoming an everyday activity.‍The geology degree was a brilliant insight into the English landscape and how it was made.‍I had aromantic vision of a career roaming the World recording and mapping extreme environments, physical and mental challenges.‍I ended up in the gold fields of Western Australia, it was an experience, I was very fit then, surviving the elements as well as a very male dominated high testosterone environment.
But it wasn’t for me.‍After a year full of the bullshit of travel I returned to the UK and started applying for jobs as an assistant.
Who did you assist?
Steve Rees gave me my first job, he was a good tutor and generous employer.
Then Bob Elsdale, he was the first photographer to own a Mac in London.
People would visit just to see it, they’d crowd around, scepticle if it would ever take off.
Both good people who showed me the ropes.

(The work above is Bob’s, not 100% sure whether Giles assisted on this job.)
What was the first image someone paid you to produce?
Rubber Plants for a brochure, a tropical plant rental company paid me 250 quid.‍Ludicrous money at the time! I was on £100 a week as a full time assistant.‍My first ad job was a series of nudes for a medical insurance company, commissioned by the Marshall brothers at Leagas Delaney.‍Just before I started I vomited with fear.‍I had gone from table top still life to a full on big production over night.‍I didn’t really know what advertising was, I he’d previously only worked in design.
Who were your photography heroes?
Many.
Henri Cartier Bresson; informative social documentary imagery with an exceptional graphic eye and sense of timing.

Andrez Kertez, he found beauty in the mundane, presenting it in a very simple reductive way.

William Klein for his fearless, confrontational portraits, shot on a 35mm lens.
He clearly had built up a rapport with his subjects and tried to capture people from afar in voyeuristic way.
I also think the ease with which he experimented with other media shows an artistic man way ahead of his time.

Sebastao Salgado for his social documentary.
The body of work that explored international mining and heavy industry in the developing World is exceptional, highlighting working practices that hadn’t changed since the Industrial Revolution.

Jeff Wall.
One of my favourite images is a ‘Sudden Gust of Wind’.

It’s based on an Hokusai painting.

It took months to construct, the airborne papers have all been placed in post production.
I don’t care how long it took, compositionally it’s brilliant.

‍Karl Blossfelt; a botanist with an artists eye.
He made photographs to catalogue plant specimens.
I’m really interested in the interaction of Art and Science.

The illustrator Haeckal is another example of a body of work born out of a fascination for science.
I first became aware of your work via Big magazine, did Vince Frost get you going?Yes. it was a big break.‍You come across a handful of people in your working life that are true talents, Vince is one of those.‍He is instinctive and trusts in good work, the work comes before the reputation.‍We became very good friends and have worked a lot together ever since.‍The images were raw, and when combined with letterpress typography made a very bold, confident magazine that everyone wanted to contribute to.

Do you prefer tight or open briefs?
It depends what it is.‍Commercially I like to work on the best idea whoever has conceived it.‍I’ll always give my view on a campaign, it’s up to the agency whether they listen.‍I’m a wasted resource when used just as an art worker, but some jobs are like that.

What’s the difference between shooting for an ad agency and a design company?
Advertising employs you for your technical ability or aesthetic, in the States they call you a ‘shooter’, which sums up the role.‍All of your energy is focused on executing a collective vision, one an agency team has championed for a brand often weeks or months in advance.‍You take on the commission with the commitment as if it were your own.‍It’s all about the production of the shoot and building a team, the bulk of the thinking has been done for you.
It is a tried and tested model so who am I to criticise, but it but seems a little outdated.‍Stronger ideas result from photographers being involved earlier in the process.‍There are some talented photographers out there whose creative abilities are under-utilised, I’ve noticed a generic quality to a lot of recent photographs, probably as a resulting from countless references found on Google images, I know it helps to sell an idea to a client, but it can limit the imagination of the creatives.‍Advertising is fixated with being first, building a story around a technique, but being first today is old news tomorrow.
Designers are out of a different mould, the life span of the work tends to be longer.
Budgets are smaller but their ideas are ambitious in a different way, the limitations encourage more thought and imagination.
It’s also a relief not to have to spend two days writing a treatment every job you do, to justify your creative credentials.  ‍The application of images is also more diverse.‍I’ve worked on design projects from postage stamps through to huge interior installations.
‘Can you shoot me a face that works upside down as well?’
I can’t think of another photographer I’d ask to do that, or one who’d take on that ludicrous challenge?

‍It’s one of the trickiest challenges you’ve ever given me.
But it was such a good idea, all the artists involved in that campaign produced wonderful work.
Your work is more like Art than any commercial photographer I can think of.
Wouldn’t you be far more famous in in that world if you were more pretentious?
Or spelled your name in a more exotic way? Gilles Revelli? Gilmondo Rev-El?
Probably, I think the public warm to an aloof, renegade facade.‍You are what you are though.‍If you play that role then you have got to sustain it.‍I’m hoping that the latest projects will make an impression on the Art world, without having to take on a tempestuous, rockstar persona.‍However, I’ve often thought about trying a pseudonym like Sebastian Conti; a new photographic presence in the fashion world.
Try it, but swap that ‘O’ for a ‘U’, it might give you a bit more attitude.

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Do you think digital technology has helped photography?
Yes, undoubtedly when used intelligently and creatively.‍It has allowed quicker workflow and more possibilities creatively.‍The draw-back is that there’s this obsession with sharpness.‍‘Hyper-real’ is one of the most annoying terms attached to imagery at the moment.‍I’m excited by imagery that takes away and refines .‍Half of the images we value today in the galleries around the World are ‘soft’ by modern-day standards.‍The speed that images can be made encourages sloppy practice, multiple versions are made to cover all eventualities, then cobbled together in post-production.‍The expectation of how much can be achieved in a single day are being pushed so hard now that photographers are having to cut corners.‍I’m excited by modern photography, but I am certain that when film was the dominant medium the whole team were sharper, because there was more at stake.
You had to be confident that when you walked off a shoot with just a few polaroids and half a dozen rolls of film that you’d executed the job.
You didn’t have the luxury of cross-referencing every frame.
Commercial imagery seems creatively very static at present.‍The platforms on which we view the digital imagery has evolved beyond any of our expectations.

Unlike a lot of commercial photographers, you don’t have a ‘look’ or style?
At first glance I’d agree, but when you look at my work as whole there’s a common thread; the subject matter is revealed minimally, through the use of a line or a plane.
The Port ‘Ten Ten’ cover is a good example, revealing the watch elements through hard shadow and silhouette, the geometry of the plane defined by black.

It was a lesson to myself of making a composition where every corner of the frame needs to be considered, as well as balancing the proportions of black white and grey.
The great Bauhaus influences played a part in this composition.
Also, I’m interested in the content not the gloss.‍Different ideas employ different processes, it means the images have a variety of looks rather than always using the camera optics route.‍The common characteristic of the work is it’s stripped back with a definite intension.‍The commercial world is obsessed with look and feel, it’s an irritating development over the last few years.
I’m always looking for discoveries and new ways of approaching themes.

You’re always trying new things, lighting with an estate agents digital ruler, taking portraits with a photo finish camera.‍Why? ‍It’s not enough just to point off the shelf lights at objects.

Are these photographs or illustrations?
One is photography, the other motion capture.They’re both about an image developing over time.
100 frames is a collaboration with Ben Koppel to create form from movement.All the red images are made from the body movement of a dancer, the black version from the movement of a British gymnast training on his floor exercise routine.The idea was developed for a 2012 Olympic Park proposal, the idea was to create life-size sculptures tracking body movements that would be fabricated in resin.

They were printed as 3d sculpture moquettes.
The big red shiny thing, studded with relief, was a commission I made with Matt Painter.
I was asked to make a sculpture of the Manchester United v Barcelona European Cup Final.
I’m not sure I’d choose the aesthetic of this now, but the idea was interesting at the time.
We were given all the data captured as the game unfolded to analyse.
These statistics are used by managers and trainers to assess the performance and tactics of the players,individually and as a team.
Every event, such as a pass, corner, header, shot or goal is logged on a time line, as well as spacially on the pitch.
I decided upon two evolving hoop shapes, representing each 90 minutes that grew over the course of the game.
Each stipple marks an event on the pitch, the largest peaks are the goals.

Experimenting is easier today, but I seem to see less of it?
Yes, it’s disappointing and surprising.
Especially in an era where there’s so many opportunities to collaborate using different source material, homogenised though digital formats.
Science / medicine / engineering use incredible methods the gather imagery.
CGI is used widely and is a very powerful tool, but tends to be used in a bland way, as a replication tool mimicking photography and film rather than expressing ideas within its own medium.
Commissioners seem uncomfortable to make imagery from the data and information available to them.
The Man Utd vs Barcelona data sculpture is a good example.
Replication seems dull and needless when there are ways of achieving the real thing through another viewpoint.
Which goes back to my point about style over content.

They say copying is the highest form of flattery, you must feel great, you’re flattered on a regular basis?
I used to feel that way in the early days.
Plagiarism is the one aspect of the business that’s made me think seriously about a different career.
There is a  lack of integrity in the business.
Ideas and methods of working are my professional identity and security.
I can spend months developing a project or idea, to then discover it’s been infused into the work flow of others can be demoralising.
Not to say financially bruising.
Agencies, magazines and photographers are all guilty, it’s a symptom of the speed with which we all have to deliver.
Images are now referenced rather than conceived.
Consequently, new projects need to be kept under wraps until a suitably scaled, appropriate project surfaces, or better still, released as an exhibition, which would mark the date and occasion to the work.
Without such launches images are copied wherever they are seen and the origin is lost or hijacked. It’d be very easy to slip into a rant at this point, it may sound like sour grapes, but I crave a  workplace surrounded by genuinely talented people.

What makes up a good picture?
I read an article a decade or so ago that crudely broke it down into four ingredients;

1.   Image needs to be flawlessly beautiful, regardless of message.

2.  Image should be shocking, controversial or taboo.

3. Image should be either informative, telling us something we don’t know or show us something we thought we knew, but with a new perspective.

4. Image should have an extraordinary narrative or back story.

In 20 years I’ve come close on a couple of occasions where I’ve made something that I’m still happy to look at ten years later.
But it’s rare that you achieve more than one of these in any image, when you do, interesting work is made.
What image are you most proud of?
I guess my finest moments would be The Insect Techtonic Project, also known as the ‘Fabulous Beasts Show’.
It was the summer show at the Natural History Museum and is now in their and the V&A’s permanent collections.

Also, the recent Battlefield Poppies stamp. It was part of the Royal Mail WW1 Centenary series, it’s out now.

What the hell are these stripes things?
It’s a bouquet that’s broken down into petals, then distributed over time.
Oh yeah!

How did you start your collaborations with Matt Willey?
We met when he was running the Frost London office, he was designing the magazine Zembla with Vince Frost and Dan Crowe.
Dan and Matt went on to set up Port magazine, followed a couple of years ago by Avaunt.
We used to The King’s Head in Clerkenwell regularly, a special pub, for our enthusiastic conversations about topics we wanted to explore, ‘At This Rate’ was the first project we did together, it came out of those conversations.

The idea was to produce a booklet and poster illustrating the rapid destruction of the rainforests.
It was a simple set of timings from every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every month, every year with corresponding area of loss in that time.
They are an alarming set of statistics; every year we lose an area three times the size of Sri Lanka.
We produced and sold them to raise funds for the Rainforest Action Network Organisation.

The Photofit Project was was another that came from those King’s Head conversations, very rewarding.
It was about identity and how you see yourself, most of us observe ourselves everyday for at least two minutes.
We were curious about how people would make an image of themselves from memory, without using a mirror.

Making drawings of oneself alienates those that are not artistic, so we decided to democratise the process by using a police photofit kit.
These were used in the 1970s in criminal cases to build a picture of a suspect for posters and newspapers.
Each kit is extremely tactile, made up of 100 or so printed strips of images of eye, mouth, nose, hair and face shapes to select from.
That finally came together as a photographic montage in a perspex frame.

A broad demographic were gathered with each participant taking around 45 mins to make their portrait, accompanied by an interview.
The results were fascinating.
The physiological comparison was immediate, yet some of the participants revealed a more emotional response than they’d revealed in their interview.
Some picked a more youthful version of themselves, when they were at their physical peak.
Some had suffered trauma and were dealing with their new lives, others had clearly spent a lot more than two minutes in front of the mirror every day, marking every mole or line with pin point accuracy.

I think the project was successful because we had designed a democratic framework for the participants to express their own vision of themselves, without any intervention or bias.
It was published in the Guardian, we also repeated the project in Canada for the Walrus magazine.

Matt’s a great talent, he’s in America now, designing the New York Times Magazine.

What photographers do you admire today?
I don’t tend to follow photography closely.
Having said that, I was blown away by the William Klein show at the Tate last year.
Photography meeting design and film and social documentary.

Also, Tim Hethrington, who lost his life in Libya in 2011.
He was an special man, regardless of the photographs that he took.
He left an incredible body work from conflict zones, not only the wars, but the aftermath, which few photographers would cover, most would move on to the next conflict.
A couple of years ago I watched an astonishing BBC4 documentary about his life and achievements, it reduced me to tears.

I love your new Shots front cover, any retouching involved?

This image is part of a large body of work that is about breaking down form and concentrating on colour alone.
How it’s made isn’t important as long as it’s engaging.
Each block of colour is accurate, sample by hand and accurate to the original flower.
The leaves are similar in that they attempt to look at the palette of a specific Acer tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
The black and white accompanying image of a Lily and Helibora were made with the opposite intension; to look at form alone.

Thanks Giles, by the way, love the new tests.
Thanks, the work is becoming more minimal over the years often, crossing over into graphics.

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‘Naturalistic’.
It’s the vogue in photography at the moment, images that feel almost user-generated; clashing colours, lens flare, areas out of focus, etc, etc.
It’s a kind of anti-style.
I think there are two reasons for its current popularity;

1: Trust.
In a world full of the kooky, unprofessional, fresh imagery you find on your various Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds, something very polished can feel like marketing.
And marketing, as most of us know, is trying to sell you something.
So ‘unprofessional’ can feel more honest.

2: Money.
It’s not so much the lack of it, it’s more the reluctance to pay ‘too much’.
Most clients can now take a pretty good picture for free, so why pay an expert a thousand times more? The picture won’t be a thousand times better.
So the gap between home-made and professional gets smaller.
People think ‘I’ll pay a hundred times more, but not a thousand’.
(NOTE FROM EDITOR: 1000 x ‘free’ is still ‘free’, as is 100 x ‘free’.)

The downside with this ‘naturalistic’ style is that often the images are very samey, cheap looking and unmemorable.
That’s a problem when you are trying to get a product noticed.
and make it more desirable than the competition.  
It’s even more of a problem with products that aren’t rational purchases, like alcohol, fragrance and jewelry.
They’re bought as much on the ‘vibe’ of the brand as they are on the product themselves.
Seduction is more important than naturalism.

There are many words you could use to describe Phil Marco’s images,
‘naturalistic’ isn’t one of them.

Where were you born?
Chicago, raised in Brooklyn.
As a child I was always drawing and began to paint at a very early age.
Later I studied fine art at Pratt and The Art Students’ League.
But I have to back up a bit because it really all began with music.
My father was an opera singer, so almost from day one the air around me was filled with the sounds of my father vocalizing, playing Caruso records and practicing arias, accompanied by my Mother at the piano.
Dad was also a musician who taught me the rudiments of music and the piano, by age four I was playing Bach and Beethoven.
Music and sounds were to have a very dominant influence in my life.
The reason we left Chicago was in response to a phone call that Dad received from Herbert Witherspoon in New York.

He said ‘Roberto; I’m going to have a place for you here at the Met’.
It was exciting news, an amazing opportunity for Dad, so we immediately began to plan and pack for a permanent move to New York.
En route to New York however Herbert Witherspoon passed away, it was an overwhelming tragic and unfortunate turn of events.

What is your first memory of being visually aware?
I was about five years old when we moved to Brooklyn.
We finally settled into an apartment in the west end of Bensonhurst, which was, to say the least, very unique.
The floor was level with an elevated subway line whose tracks were just about eight feet away from our third floor windows facing the street.
So whenever a train passed, the entire apartment and the furniture in it would shimmy and shake. At night I’d love to put out the room lights and listen intently to the syncopated sound of the approaching trains anxiously waiting for them to pass by the windows.
The light emanating from inside the cars was dream-like and surreal.
The cars were so close that you could very clearly see the expressions on the faces of the strap hangers saturated in this glow of warm yellow-green light.
It was like viewing the animation of a George Tooker painting.

How did you get into the photography business?
I came across an ad for a photo assistant.
Now, I had a very light knowledge of photography, having used a camera only as a sketching pad to record ideas for future paintings.
I really didn’t have too much to offer in the way of experience but I had a lot of nerve, and confidence that I could to do anything that I needed to do, if I put my mind to it, so with that motivation I answered the ad.
I walked up the steps, which were dripping with water, and I came to a door gushing water from beneath, flooding the hall.
The photographer answered the door; he had been photographing people showering for a series of ads for Dial soap.
I told him that I knew very little about photography but I was willing to learn and do what ever was necessary.
I guess it was my directness and the fact that he was flooded and he needed somebody to help him at the time: He handed me a mop and said, ‘The job’s yours kid.’
So I started there part-time because the whole objective was to secure more time and funds to pursue painting.
The job paid $37.00 a week to start.
My job was to get there in the morning, wake up the photographer, walk the dog, and take care of some very basic studio needs.
In time I picked up on loading cameras, mixing chemicals, printing and what ever else he needed as we went along.
The photographer’s name was Lew Long, we still keep in touch and he’s as excited about photography today at 91 as he was then.

Who else did you assist?
The first and only photographer I ever assisted of consequence was Lew.
He was a brilliant illustrator, with a wonderful attitude towards work and life.
He introduced me to the operation and loading of 35 and 2 1/4 cameras, the basics of printing, and darkroom 101.
Lew’s most salient gift to me however, was his adroit ability for dealing with people, clients, and talent.
Other than that, I really didn’t have a formal education in photography per se, to a great extent I learned through books, experimentation, and practice, which may account for why some of my approaches to the medium were fresh and unique.

What was your first paid photograph?
A B&W of a men’s wallet.
1959.
$7.00.
It was for Miller Advertising.

As I became more involved in photography and was compelled to use it more on the job I realized that I was in awe of its ability to capture and convey ideas so rapidly and direct.
The skinny is that the excitement I began to feel about photography as a medium totally sublimated my need to paint and what initially had just been a means to an end, became an end unto itself, film became my canvas.

How did you start on your own?
A little studio on the outskirts of the Village became available, I made my move.
It was on Eleventh Street off University Place, just around the corner from the Cedar St. Bar where Jackson Pollack, Franz Kline and a number of other abstract expressionists would gather.
I later learned another of the former occupants of the studio was Robert Frank.

Things were looking up.
I still painted occasionally, but it was becoming obvious that my interest in photography was taking over and growing stronger.
My first professional camera was an old 1000 F Hasselblad that I picked up in a pawn shop.

I began experimenting with color by flooding a small restaurant sink with temped water and immersed some stainless steel canisters I picked up down the Bowery, filled with various solutions of color chemistry.
The process was crude, but the results were very exciting, and genuinely inspired me to move on.
With no clients or layouts to follow, I just began to photograph simple images that inspired me. Similar to the way I approached painting.
My vision and concepts were strong, but my photographic technique left a lot to be desired.
So I continued to reference and apply the lighting and compositional skills I used in painting to photography.
I would take a simple circular form like an orange and photograph it in every conceivable light and point of view for days.

Most of my first subjects were from the grocery store, and friends, primarily because they were readily available, inexpensive, and without an hourly rate.
Concentrating on still lives however gave me the opportunity to learn how to apply light to a wide range of textures and shapes.
It also satiated my interests in science and mechanical problem solving.
As I became more proficient with my technique and began to learn how to create dramatic lighting for my concepts, the excitement I felt about photography as a medium of expression began to grow exponentially.
When I was in my early twenties I created a few dozen images that I was pleased with, and thought that it was time to go out and get clients.

I read that when you used to tout your portfolio around agencies you would sometimes show art directors the transparencies in the loo, as they were so dark?
I came across a Milanese projector called a Farrania, which was totally self-contained in a thin black matte case.
It had a pull up arm with a lens that projected an image onto the inside cover of the case which served as a screen.
The 2  1/4 x 2  1/4 slides were then slid one at a time by hand into the gate. It also had a built-in
storage space for thirty slides. I opted to use this method of showing my work, because I couldn’t afford quality color prints, and I didn’t have any of the lush 8 x 10 transparencies that would eventually become my format of choice.
However the 2  1/4 format at the time served beautifully.
It offered quality reproduction, and a fast and economical way to capture and present visual ideas.
I read all the trade magazines and award books I could get my hands on, looking for Designers, Art Directors, and Ad Agencies whose work caught my eye, and could relate to.
So I compiled a short list, and began making phone calls. After numerous hang-ups and rejections, I finally began to get through.
Armed with twenty slides and the confidence I gained from the positive feedback I was receiving, I would do what ever was necessary to provide the best lighting conditions for the slide show,
Because if they weren’t shown in a fairly darkened room, it would be a total wash out, and any semblance of quality and color saturation would be lost.
At times I’m sure that it strained the patience of my curious, but confused audience.
I would think nothing of walking into a room, and after a brief and polite introduction quickly start running around the room closing doors and drawing blinds or drapes over windows to achieve the right light level for the show.
So if the conditions weren’t right, I just wouldn’t show them. However that was rarely the case, as I was always determined, (‘possessed’ is probably a better word), to find or create the right light level no matter what convolutions it would take.
After a number of successful showings, rumors began to abound about this young Italian kid who was going around the ad agencies with a little black box, and a bit of an attitude about not showing his work if the light in the room wasn’t just right.
The general consensus, however, was that the images were so fresh and exciting that it was well worth the initial minor annoyance.

Which agencies gave you a break?
I remember going to Doyle Dane Bernbach for the first time in the mid sixties having made an appointment with a young art director named Len Sirowitz.
The light in his room was terrible, and I was just about to pack it in, when I spotted a janitor’s closet across the hall that he reluctant climbed into with me.
After a few uneasy moments in the dark, when I began to show my slides, he was so excited about the work that he called in Bill Bernbach, who in turn called out the entire floor to line up outside the janitor’s closet.
As a result all of DDB opened up for me, Len and I also worked together on the award-winning campaign for the Better Vision Institute that became part of advertising history.
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Who were the photographers you admired most?
Well, Irving Penn, probably because of our shared sensibilities and passion for design and simplicity.

Also impressive is the fact that he continued to evolve and produce his wonderful signature graphic images well into his 80s.
I regret that i never had the pleasure of meeting him.
Other influences were;
Edward Steichen.

Edward Weston.

Bill Brandt.

Jan Saudek.

Robert Frank.

Sally Mann.

What about artists, your lighting is very painterly?
My first and foremost influential heroes were the painters.
For lighting it would be Caravaggio.

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Joseph Wright of Derby.

Rembrandt.

Vermeer.
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For concept, it would be the Surrealists;
Magritte.

Christian Vogt.

Dali.
In particular his Crucifixions.

Also the abstracts;
Franz Kline.

Robert Motherwell.

Ellsworth Kelly.

James Turrell.

Who’s the best art director you ever worked with?
Again, as a Certified Anal Retentive I’m really at a loss to select the best.
There were just so many: Ralph Ammirati, Steve Frankfurt, Herb Lubalin, Lou Dorfsmen
Gene Federico, Bill Bernbach, Len Sirowitz, Herm Davis, Charlie Piccirillo, Ivan Chermayeff.

Which English photographers do you like?
One of the English photographers I admired most was actually born in NYC, Lester Bookbinder, he moved to London in 1959.
Loved his work!
An amazing talent.

How do you brand these everyday objects with your stamp?
My approach to Lighting; Design; Print and Film.
My overriding goal, is to illuminate an object in such a way that it is rendered in its most beautiful and memorable form without calling attention to the lighting, composition, or props, so that nothing gets in the way of what it is you want to communicate.

From the very beginning, my work has always been about the idea, the concept as the narrative. The function of lighting and technique are in a sense the subtext.
The type of light, the number of lights, and the quality of light that I use varies from project to project, depending on what aspect of the subject I want to emphasize or what emotion I’d like to evoke, but the key factor remains the same: Simplicity, the illusion of one light, one direction.

How do you brand these everyday objects with your stamp?
My approach to Lighting; Design; Print and Film.
My overriding goal, is to illuminate an object in such a way that it is rendered in its most beautiful and memorable form without calling attention to the lighting, composition, or props, so that nothing gets in the way of what it is you want to communicate.
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From the very beginning, my work has always been about the idea, the concept as the narrative. The function of lighting and technique are in a sense the subtext.
The type of light, the number of lights, and the quality of light that I use varies from project to project, depending on what aspect of the subject I want to emphasize or what emotion I’d like to evoke, but the key factor remains the same: Simplicity, the illusion of one light, one direction.

When the brain selects a subject and positions it on the retina, its recognition is more immediate and impressive when the light that falls on that subject or scene is of a single source.
We feel most comfortable with this type of light simply because for millions of years, most of mans waking hours are lit by a single source of light, the Sun.
Simplicity is an elusive quality and definitions don’t come easily.
The word itself is a misnomer.

In fact it’s a very complex process of editing the subject down to it’s essence, judiciously exercising restraints as to what to subtract and what to keep.
With the omission of all non-essentials, what we’re left with is a graphic statement that allows nothing to get in the way of the idea we wish to impart.

Why move into film?
It was gradual.
One day I thought of a great visual, and I said to myself, wow that’s a great idea!
But how do I get it to move?
I knew then that the transition was complete, and that my creative vision was now designing images in movement for maximum excitement and impact as opposed to stills.
It was also clear to me that if I wanted to achieve the expertise that I had attained in print, I had to temporarily set print aside and make a total commitment to film.
Then I made the second best move I ever made in my life, (the first being to marry her) Pat and I formed a film production company.
She’s truly an amazing person, bright, intuitive, a world-class producer, and my muse who keeps me grounded.
From the early eighties to the late nineties I was totally committed to film.
I directed hundreds of commercials, worked on features, won numerous awards, Clios & Cannes Lions.

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Phil on a number of my films.
He’s a man of extraordinary talents. It seems his passion is to take an everyday object or event and show it in an entirely new and exciting way.” – Martin Scorsese.
Yeah, I formed a close working relationship with Marty, creating graphic visuals and special effects for his films including ‘The Color of Money’, ‘Casino’, ‘Kundun’, ‘Gangs of New York’,  ‘Aviator’ and some of the early title work of ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’.

You got back into to stills?
Yeah, mid 90’s.
A number of agencies encouraged me to shoot the print as well as direct the television commercials for their clients, to give them a campaign signature, total visual continuity.
This eventually led to the rekindling of my love affair with print.
The Van Cleef & Arpels work I did with my old friend Gennaro Andreozzi, was a lovely body of work.

Digital: has it been good or a bad thing for photography?
Sometimes I wonder if today’s young graphic warriors realize, or can fully appreciate, how fortunate they are to have at their fingertips – literally and figuratively, all the options and wonders of today’s computer and digital technology.
I remember having to wait hours, even days for type to be released from the typesetter, in order to layout a single line of copy.
Every time I hit the dissolve key on the Avid and the dissolve morphs into place before my eyes it blows me away, because it brings to mind a time when we had to wait a day or more for the simplest dissolve to return from the labs, and if you got it back right the first time, it was a gift.
Digital’s ability to allow us to instantly review and alter or recreate a new image is one of its greatest attributes.
It’s put the creative control of the image back into the hands of the Artist.
With technological changes taking place exponentially, one can only speculate on what lies ahead.
Maybe digital will interface with lasers, allowing holograms to develop into a more controllable
medium, or harnessing brain waves so that ideas can be imprinted directly onto hard copies of any material.
It’s also plausible that many of today’s mediums will dovetail into interactive virtual environments, or merge into totally new venues.

If you had to save one sheet of film from a house fire, what would it be?
Truth be told; if I had to save one sheet of film from a house fire trying to make a selection as a certified, anal retentive dyslexic, my ass would probably go down in flames.

What are you doing today?
My primary focus has been on my personal work, and enjoying total creative freedom to experiment and develop visual ideas.
I’m also enjoying the pleasure of watching our gifted son Peter’s rise as an extremely talented pop artist.
Currently, I’m very involved in shopping for “the” gallery to represent my fine art print work and installations; Publishing a few books; and completing a Doc. about the children of the Sioux Nation in South Dakota and their tragic struggle with despair, drugs and suicide.

Photography wise my primary focus has been on my personal work, and enjoying total creative freedom to experiment and develop visual ideas.

Finally, are you’re still shooting?
Sure, although my visuals have bridged five decades, I’m still a work in progress, continually searching and evolving.

Who knows what venues lie ahead for film and and visual media?
But for me, one thing will always remain constant:  A great Idea, and the pursuit of a strong beautiful graphic, simply stated.

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I bet there were few takers for the 1966 National Library Week brief amongst DDB New York's creative department.Because the previous year Charlie Piccirillo had produced the definitive ad.It looks so simple and innocent.But try ignoring it.Or forgetting it.It's impossible.It makes you think about books and libraries in a new way, without big dramatic photos or imaginative colourful drawings, using only the very product it's promoting; the alphabet.Whilst interviewing a couple of guys from that sixties creative department I stumbled upon this and couldn't resist sharing it."One of my earliest assignments after being made an Art Director was a PSA ad for the Public Library. Full page, NY Times. Wow. How did this one get by my supervisor, Bill Taubin who seemed to glom all the plums? Probably because he also assigned me a ton of small space ads for EL AL that would run in the Tel Aviv News, where the ads would be translated into Hebrew. In any event it was a big opportunity for me and Monte Gherlter so we spent some long nights working on it.We finally came up with the idea of using the alphabet as the visual.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzI set the line in 12 pt type and placed it in the middle of a full page of white space. Monte’s headline still holds the record of being the longest headline ever written in DDB history. However, it was brilliant: In your Public Library they have these arranged in ways that can make you cry, giggle, love, hate, wonder, ponder and understand. I sent the copy out for type (remember that) and in the morning did a rough paste up. I was so excited I decided to show the ad off to the art director next door, which just happened to beHelmut Krone. He took a long look, then he said, or rather growled, “Boring”. I was crushed. I spent the next 2 days and nights putting together a dozen new versions, using every imaginable alphabetical visual device from children’s blocks to a bowl of alphabet soup.Then the trouble was, I couldn’t make up my mind. So I called Nancy and asked if I could come up and see Mr. Bernbach. To my surprise Nancy said he was coming down to see Bob Gage and would stop by my office on the way. Bill come to my office? I called all my Art Director buddies to come take a look.When Bill came in I had all 10 versions pinned to my corkboard. He glanced around and looked as confused as I was. Then he said: “This is a really good idea Charlie, but boy did you screw it up”. Why don’t you just put down the alphabet in small type across the page as the visual. It would be much more powerful.” I said, Bill, that’s the way I started, but Helmut thought it was boring. Bill shook his head, and as he walked out he said, “Charlie I’m going to see Bob Gage now, and the first thing I’m going to tell him is to give you a raise, then I’m going to tell him change your office”. The Library ad won my first Gold Medal at the 1962 Art Directors Club Award Show.It’s still my most treasured."

I used to walk past this poster every week for about a year.I was fifteen, my Art teacher had got hold of a life size billboard poster, a 48 sheet, or I should say 48 sheets.It was twenty or thirty foot long, and papered the entire corridor that lead to our classroom.We were all bemused by it at first, just a close-up of an electric circuit board? weird? Was it even an ad?Then we found the gold pack-shot.Who knew adverts could be so cool, sophisticated and playful?I walked past it every week for about a year, it made a lasting impression.

1965: The Government banned cigarette companies from advertising on T.V.Press and posters become crucial to Tobacco companies.1971: The Government declares that cigarettes must carry a health warning, and that press and poster advertising must donate a strip at the bottom of their advertising to print the message 'Every pack carries a Government Health Warning.' In retrospect, that's the least they could've done, but at the time it must've caused outrage in agencies with cigarette accounts; 'You mean we need to take a piece of OUR pages and posters, space that WE'VE paid for, to say bad things about our product?' So you'd have all the creative bods in an agency trying to say good things about their brand of tobacco in the top bit of the ad, and effectively, at the bottom it would say 'Yeah, whatever, we think it's RUBBISH. signed THE GOVERNMENT.'1976: The Government come up with some more rules for the Advertising industry: 'If you're advertising Tobacco DON'T feature people using the product, in fact, DON'T feature people at all. DON'T say anything about the product, don't even mention it, DON'T even write it's name on the ad, DON'T even think about its name when you are creating these ads.Come to think of it, the only words we want to see, and we want them in black on white, clearly legible, nice and big, saying "This product gives you lung cancer or can kill you". Capiche?'1977: Benson & Hedges agency, Collett Dickenson Pearce, are increasingly irritated by the number of companies aping their original Gold Box campaign.It meant that B&H advertising was starting to get lost in the crowd.The account guy on the business, John Ritchie, made a big call; 'Forget all we've done! we need something completely new!'It was a big ask; the 'Gold Box' campaign was famous, award-winning and had turned a niche product into the brand leader.As if that wasn't pressure enough, the new Government rules meant you couldn't show or say anything about the product.So not only have you got your hands tied behind your back, you have one leg tied too.

Art Director Alan Waldie and Copywriter Mike Cozens were one of the teams given the task. WALDIE: ‘Days drifted into weeks and Ritchie, who was forever chasing me, said “What have you got?”I said “we’ve got something, but it’s probably not quite ready, it’s a bit different.It’s dare I say, a bit advanced. I’ll need to explain it”.“You won't need to explain” said Ritchie “Let‘s have a look”.Silence descended on the room as they gazed at some totally incomprehensible layouts of birdcages, mouse-holes, eggs, sardines.No messages.No words at all.Unified only by a solitary gold pack.A rival team had also created a campaign, unsure of which to go for, CDP M.D. Frank Lowe takes both to his mentor, former CDP Creative Director Colin Millward, for his view.‘One will let you sleep at night, the other will make you famous’ was Millward’s verdict.Sleep wasn't a priority for Frank Lowe or CDP, so the famous campaign was presented to the B&H Chairman Stuart Cameron and Marketing Director Peter Wilson.They loved it, telling the agency to spare no expense in photographing the ads.

When money was no object Brian Duffy was the guy, he was promptly called upon to turn Waldie's drawings into photographs.

An arty choice.He wasn’t the consummate commercial photographer.He was opinionated, experimental and very creative.Brian Duffy was one of the trio of famous cockney snappers, (the others being David Bailey and Terrence Donovan), probably the least known, arguably the most talented.Duffy went to work and had the sets built in his Primrose Hill studio. DUFFY: ‘I changed the colour and scale of everything, which looks pretty weird today.I played with optical illusions, since I know enough about what lenses can do and plate cameras and changing perspective.They’re real photographs and it’s quite complex to do things like that, which look like trick photography.They’re not phoned in from the coast, it’s all done in the camera.’ The first shot was ‘Mousetrap’, showing a pack replacing to lure to a presumably nicotine addicted mouse from its hole. He tried five different lighting set-ups before settling on the final image.It set the style for the campaign.

Duffy’s son and assistant Chris remembers that ‘Birdcage’ was a very simple set unusually lit, ‘We lit it with an old Rank projector light and through it we projected an image of a bird that we had reversed out on a negative’.

David Montgomery was then called in to shoot these two.

Adrian Flowers shot the last of the first years campaign.

The shots still look amazing. They looked even better when blown up and put on billboards. They were like nothing people had seen. If they ran tomorrow they would still be like nothing most people had seen. Here's an from of one at Victoria Station in 1978.

The campaign became so famous even the Government spoofed it.

The brief was then opened up to the whole creative department.Here’s what Neil Godfrey and Tony Brignull made of it with photographer Jimmy Wormser.

Pre-CGI, pre-austerity, it was shot for real, this is how the shoot went:The agency and photographer turned up in Egypt on Sunday.Scouted the location on Monday morning; perfect.Turned up Tuesday to shoot; too hazy.Turned up Wednesday; too hazy.Thursday; too hazy.Friday; too hazy.Saturday; too hazy.Sunday; too hazy.Monday; perfect.(It turned out the hazy effect was pollution from the local factories, only after a weekend of not pumping out crap was it shootable.)

This one was shot on the top floor of the National Liberal Club, the payment was the luxurious fitted carpet used for the shot. Because the young people were in and out of each others rooms all night, photographer Adrian Flowers used a ‘20 - 30 minute exposure, so that they wouldn't show up on the film’.Again it took a week to get a result they were happy with.

Two years in, the question was asked how would this new surreal B&H behave in film?The answer, created by Waldie, and Mike Cozens was shot by Hugh Hudson.It was also featured in the Guinness Book of Records every year until the mid-eighties as the most expensive commercial ever made.Worth every penny.

This was followed by another Hugh Hudson epic, this time created by Johns O'Driscoll and Kelley, not as famous, equally mesmerising.

The photographer of this one; Max Forsythe recalled: “The finished shot looks very much like the original layout, but the struggle was how to light it. No conventional lighting seemed suitable.After about two days of messing about I finally settled on sunlight coming through the studio window with a bit of BBQ grill to cast the shadows.The Chameleon and the pack were both models, we did get a real one in the studio, but soon realised that it was not possible to work with it, it kept disappearing.They were about five times actual size, which made it possible to shoot on 10×8.”

The writer of this one is unknown.

In the eighties, art director Nigel Rose takes the reins.

Here are some of Nigel’s fantastic roughs for ideas that didn't get bought.

Looking at back at these posters I can't help wondering why people aren’t producing posters like this at the moment.Instead of trying to shout a dull message across the street, why not create something that intrigues, makes people lean in, then rewards them by creating a smile in the mind?Kind of interactive.

Over the last couple of months I’ve had quite a bit of feedback from colleges; ‘Do more posts that go through the decision making process, we like them best’.
It’s flattering that the colleges are using my blog, but weird for me, because if I’ve got the choice of interviewing say…Dave Trott or talking about why I picked Futura over Baskerville or preferred the word kerfuffle more than brouhaha, I’d choose the former every time.
But I’m going to try and post a few more of the latter, showing the micro decisions made along the way.

ENCOUNTER 1.
I first saw the critter back in 1999, he was flogging subscriptions for ITV Digital.
Monkey, or ‘Monkeh’ as he’s known to his friends, disappeared shortly after along with ITV Digital. He made a brief appearance in The Office.
When the liquidators turned up at ITV Digital looking for stuff of any value, they came across Monkey, then came a dispute over who owned him – the liquidators or Mother, the agency that gave birth to him.
An agreement was reached that neither should own him, he should be adopted by Comic Relief and put to work pulling in donations.
Why would an ad agency would want the rights to a now defunct character from an advert?  who’s going to want a character previously associated with a company that went belly up?
Then, and I’m not sure whether by chance or design, the only company in the country with a monkey as a spokesman turns up with a problem ‘They can no longer use real monkeys in their ads’ its cruel.
What are the chances?
So monkey starts peddling tea, PG tips tea.

ENCOUNTER 2.
By the time I got to work with Monkey he’d shed 200lbs, or Al, as he was known.
The initial task was a handful of ads about the variants; Fruit, Gold and Green.
My first concern was how do we bring Monkey to life in static media?
He doesn’t look himself illustrated, and when photographed he often looks… well, like what he is; a stuffed sock puppet.

Exhibit A.

Who could breathe life into this sock puppet?
What photographer would even take a puppet seriously?
Who would be sensitive to the character of a puppet?
What kind of photographer would be arsed to worry whether his little woolen mouth looked like it was an ironic smile not a naive smile?
Oh, and also make the images look cool, and graphic?
What kind of nutcase gives a shit about that kind of stuff?
I get mark Mark Denton on the phone.
After seeing the layouts Mark makes a great observation; ‘Make him small in the frame, that’s part of his charm in the tv ads.’
Like all the best observations, it’s bloody obvious once someone says it.
In retrospect Monkey looks more like a gorilla when filling the frame.
With Mark on board we start shooting.

FRUIT TEA SHOT.

The questions were;
a) Is the Carmen Miranda visual a little too familiar?
b) Is there a more humorous pose for Monkey? As we are not dealing with a temperamental actor we can shoot forever.
c) If we try something else, how do we handle all those packs?

The pose was funnier, admittedly only 11% funnier, but funnier all the same.
We had a last minute headline switch.

‘POSH’ TEA SHOT.

Here were the questions;

a) Mark’s rough, as usual, was magnificent, full of life, frankly you could run the rough, but are there too many elements?

b) Where will the headline go and will it be light or dark enough to be read/seen?

c) How will it look posh without lots of props?

I managed to cut five words from the headline and made it sound posher by swapping ‘I’ to ‘one’.
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GREEN MONKEY SHOT.

The big debate on this shot was whether we really needed to shoot it?
It kind of worked didn’t it?
So our questions were;
a) Would a colour that contrasts with green make the green look more noticeable?
b) Showing five means people won’t focus on any, could we show less?
c) Would he look better smaller in frame?
We reshot it.
It’s similar to the mock-up, just better.

ENCOUNTER 3.
‘Al’, Monkey’s big boned chum has departed and a new campaign is needed.
In a world where Coffee is eating Teas lunch, how can we position PG tips and Monkey?
The planning department proposed positioning PG tips as honest, no nonsense and real alternative to coffee.
Planner/creative hybrid guy Chris Vernon a neat line the summed up the thought ‘Keep it tea’, meaning ‘Keep it real’, (only with ‘tea’ in it).
A lot of funny work had been done, but the sticking point seemed to be what was Monkey’s role?
Should the campaign be based on him hanging out with people who were’t keeping it tea?
Learning about what was or wasn’t ‘keeping it tea’?
Observing others that weren’t keeping it tea?
Etc, etc.
I thought the simplest way was to get Monkey to call out the pretentious, gimmicky and downright silly.
My first thought was to literally do just that; create spoof, pretentious content and have Monkey calling it out.
In tv he could walk on half way through the ad to call it to a halt or in print he could be standing opposite, reacting, generally being appalled.

We shared them with the client.

A couple of questions emerge:
a) ‘The two parts are a bit complicated, could it be simpler?’ – Mark Waites.
It’s a fair point.
b) ‘Monkey is a bit passive, couldn’t he be a bit more involved?’ – Client.
Fair point.
c) ‘Couldn’t we do it without paying for ads for lots of other companies?’ – Mark Waites.
Again, fair point.
So, how do I get the pretentious bit and the response bit within the same half?
In a simple way?
With Monkey being funnier?
Well, Comedians do it.
They stand alone and call out the nonsense in the world.
Take Jerry Seinfeld, he’s always pointing out the silly or pretentious things we all do, like ‘why do Chemists have to be a foot and a half higher than the public?’
Let’s have Monkey pointing out stuff that isn’t keeping it real, like Jerry, only more English.
What can I poke fun at? Oh joy, I’m in Shoreditch, let’s have a look out of the window.
Young people with beards, (mainly men).

Sock-less hipsters.

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Pretentious phrases.

What else is annoying?
Endlessly being told I simply HAVE to watch The Wire/Breaking Bad/Game Of Thrones/etc, etc.

The whole palava around ordering a coffee.

Some were starting to work, but there were watch-outs.
1: Avoid being too judgemental.
2: Avoid being too Shoreditch.
3: Avoid being non-funny.
Words generally feel different in type than handwriting, more formal for one thing.
I thought it would be worth seeing how they felt tonally once mocked-up.
So how should they look and feel?
a) We have to use the PG font; Cheltenham.
b) We should use the PG tips brand colors; green and red.
c) We need to make them look simple; it’s an ad.
d) We should avoid them looking too designed; it goes against the idea of ‘keeping it real.’
e) They should feel contemporary; with tea consumption falling every year and PG tips being nearly a hundred years old, it’s important to make the brand feel relevant to today.

FIRST ROUGH:

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Looks a bit rubbish.
And cheap.
Maybe if we minimize the colours by making Monkey black & white?
A tone on the background might make it feel less cheap, less like a mac run out.
Also, ‘keep it tea’ feels like it’s floating, maybe it should link to the logo?

SECOND ROUGH:

Better.
Right, what else isn’t ‘keeping it real’?
The fashion industry.
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The tech obsessed.

Those overly friendly ads.

Language.

And beardy writer Craig Ainsley pops over with a neat dig at Shoreditch.

NEWSFLASH! NEW PACKAGING ABOUT TO BE INTRODUCED.

Fortunately it’s been designed by JKL, so it’s magnificent.
We have to switch our font to their new one; Neutraface.
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Good result, Neutraface is  a better, more contemporary font.
Maybe Monkey should have ‘Keep It Tea’ on his t-shirt?
We would lose an element and link the line to Monkey.

Looks a bit crap, plus it seems to make the line feel more bombastic, in a bad way.
Maybe we run the endline on from the headline and let the colors separate them?

Better, more contemporary, simpler and slightly cooler.
(To run in January 2015.)

Mark Waites chips in a line on his way to the loo.

Nick Hallberry & Dave Colman nail the inevitable ‘amazeballs’ execution.

And one from planner/creative hybrid guy Chris Vernon.

Placement team Raine & Lisa* pop over with a slightly left field script.
(Now known as ‘Permanent team Raine & Lisa’.)

Not sure  of it as a script, but love the static image of Monkey mimicking Kim Kardashian.
Let’s do it as a poster.
Find the exact Kim reference then mimic it.

Oops, the brown is a bit weird.
Lose the brown.

Box is a bit weird.
Lose the box.

Looks a bit fiddly.
Simplify the type by putting it in a single line along the bottom of the poster.
Make Monkey black & white and fitness the arc of the tea.
Also, let’s put some little splashes in the tea cup, for 7% more humour.

Let’s push the mug onto the edge of Monkey’s bum, it’ll give us another 3% humour uplift.

It feels more comfortable to follow the arc of the tea from left to right, the way people read, also it means we end on the PG tips logo, so let’s switch it around.
And where’s the background tone?
Let’s angle the cup, as if it may fall off at any moment, (4% more humour) and try the tea in black & white too.

Black & White tea looks too weird.

Better.
Maybe, because ‘Keep it tea’ is new we should lead on it, to launch the idea?  The observations could be smaller, secondary?

Good theory, but the jokes get lost.
Back to where we were.
We shoot with Mark again.
(He brings in Fern Beresford for technical support.)

My son Louis gets to hang with Monkey.

I get to hang with ‘Of-Course-You-Can’ Malcolm, who now operates Monkey.

ENCOUNTER 4.
At a bus stop.
Unfortunately I missed the last bit of the process due to leaving Mother.
Mark, Nick, Dave and planner/creative hybrid guy Chris pushed it over the finishing line without me.

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Imagine these pictures:1. A baby lying down.2. A group of men talking.3. A broken down car.4. A Policeman on the street.5. A girl skipping.6. A kid playing marbles.Most people would imagine them something like this.

Mid-shots.Side on.With the main object in the middle of the frame.Almost in 2D, a bit like a diagram.It's hard to imagine pictures from other angles.Even harder to draw them.So most layouts start life a s a kind of 2D diagram, a bit like the pictures above. It's always been the case. But over the last ten years or so, the 'mock-up' has grown. So now, after the art director has drawn rough, we look for a better, photographic representation of what the art director has drawn. The client signs the ad off. Now we have a blueprint for the photographer to match. The photographer doesn't have to think about it too much. Why reinvent the wheel? It can be embellished, but essentially the image is related to the one we used in the mock-up. Otherwise why mock it up? Consequently the idea was stunted at birth. It didn't evolve from that very basic 2D drawing. Good photographers work in 3D. They can find angles which can make an idea more dramatic, more surprising and more emotional. Useful when you're trying to get someone to engage with your message. At the moment too many photographers are simply used to colour in, not create. It's a waste, because they know all the angles.

The third and last post on Lester Bookbinder, unless by some miracle I get to interview him.If I thought finding the pictures was tough that was nothing compared to finding the words.But here's what I've managed to discover.a) He was born in New York City in 1929.b) He trained with the photographer Reuben Samberg.

c) He opened his own studio in 1955.d) He moved to London in 1959.e) Long before the New York Police Chief Bill Bratton started talking ‘zero tolerance’, Lester was operating a similar policy in London way back in the sixties.MARTIN HILL, (Set Art Director): ‘No detail was beyond his eagle eye. The almost invisible joints in wallpaper, micro blemishes on a distant skirting board, all had to be dealt with and rendered perfect. On a square foot basis his sets were by far the most expensive and time consuming to make. Mouldings were baked enamel, wall paper hand stenciled, all surfaces exercises in perfection.One of his tricks was to direct a carbon arc light across the set to highlight any imperfection, and woe betide if found any were found.To have him walk on set on the morning of the shoot and just nod his head in approval was one of the art director’s highlights.’RON COLLINS, ( Art Director): ‘Years ago we were shooting a still life. Just a bottle and glass of beer. It was only the second time I’d worked with Lester and he spent about six hours setting it up.Finally he asked if I’d like to have a look.So I looked through the camera and then reached around and gently moved the glass about 1/32 of an inch.When I turned around Lester had gone.I went into the office and asked his secretary where he was. She said he’d probably gone for a walk and would be right back. I told her what I’d done and her face darkened. “Oh dear”, she said, “he won't have liked that’’.Finally he returned.“Ronnie’’, he said very “please don’t ever do that again. Talk. Point. But don’t touch!”I realized he’d spent hours finessing the shot and I had ruined it in a moment.Since then, even with the young photographers, I don't touch. I point.’ROMAIN d'ANSEMBOURG, (Photographer): ‘During my diploma course at the Ealing Technical College, in 1983 or 1984, we were invited to Lester Bookbinder’s studio.What struck me most was his attempt to capture the hollowness of an avocado after removing the stone. He showed us a sequence of 10x8 or 11x14 inch transparancies of an ever increasing ‘emptiness’ - on the edge between (suggested) 3-dimensionality and 2-dimensionality (to which we poor photographers are condemned); with a degree of perfection and urge to capture the uncapturable that I will indeed never forget.’MARK REDDY, (Art Director): ‘Lester ignored me during the shoot, until at one point I heard him shout from under the black cloth “Mark...come and have a look’’. I thought finally he's warming up, I walked over to the camera and put my head under the black cloth. I'm now virtually nose to nose with Lester. He looked at me and said “Not you!”. He'd meant his assistant, also called Mark. I slunked back over to my chair.JOHN O'DRISCOLL, (Art Director): ‘When I worked with Lester his set looked nothing like a normal set, it was like the laboratory of some strange scientist; weird tungsten lighting everywhere, and three assistants, dressed head to toe in black. They looked like waiters.’BARNEY EDWARDS, (Photographer): ‘He was once shooting for an agency in Germany, he sent the film to Germany for approval. They asked for something to be moved in the composition.The following day Lester sent a new batch of film to Germany.What they saw were not their amendments to the composition, but Lester’s assistant standing in front of the set with his his two fingers sticking up. Exactly as Lester had positioned him.’Whatever the description of his working method, the results are as powerful today as they were then.This first batch of work was shot by Lester in New York during the fifties.

Around 1959/60, he moves to London becoming a regular contributor to Vogue, Queen and Nova.

He also starts to make an impact on the advertising world too, with campaigns like this one for Bachelors cigarettes by J. Walter Thompson. (1962/3.)

Before long he's working the best agencies in London, including the best; Collett Dickenson Pearce.

For one creative team at CDP, Alan Parker* and Paul Windsor, whatever the client, Ford, Harvey's Bristol Cream, Whitbread or Senior Service Extra cigarettes, whether shooting on location, in a studio, people or objects, Lester Bookbinder was the answer.*Yes, THAT Alan Parker.

In the sixties great photographers were eye-waveringly well paid and deluged with work, consequently they'd turn down way more than they'd accept.Submitting a layout to someone like Lester in those days would be like submitting a script to Ringan or Glazer today; almost pointless.So I find it intriguing as to why he took on the Gilt Edge Carpets campaign.There couldn't have been layouts, the brief must have literally been “Can you shoot some rolls of carpet?...please Lester.”Is there anything less glamorous, less stimulating or more dull to photograph than a roll of carpet.Few photographers would even take on the challenge.Most wouldn't have the patience or will power to try to give the shots ‘something’.But somehow Lester manages to give the shots elegance and sophistication.

In 1971, Robert Waterhouse talked to Lester for the Design Journal:‘Lester Bookbinder, the American photographer who has imposed his distinctive imagination on British advertising and magazines.“Look. I take photography seriously, but not myself.” Lester Bookbinder, one of London's most successful and creative photographers though not necessarily at the same time - is careful to suggest the right image.’Violently self deprecatory about past work he is nonetheless very touchy about other people's attitudes to it and the kind of job it now brings in.That job may not be exactly what he wants but, having made sure there's enough money for it to be done properly, he proceeds to lavish on it his considerable talents; or, to put it in the language of a Jewish New Yorker born on Bleecker Street, “I work my ass off”.Still life advertising photography is an ever-present reality to Bookbinder.Skill in this craft helped him - after spells as a fashion photographer and illustrator - establish his own New York studio in the mid fifties.There his particular ability to capture, or more often create, the inscape or “this-ness” of a consumer product led him towards the top of a highly treacherous profession.An exploratory voyage to Europe some ten years ago produced return trips paid for by agencies and four years later he settled here, collecting in due time an English wife, a Somerset cottage and more still life.“I've been relegated to it here. The label is stuck on me so solidly that unless I make a great effort that's all the work I get. The trouble is I thrive on pack jobs. When they can't afford forty people running up and down a beach they come to me.’’So, working for agencies, he shoots the glimmering whisky bottle, the sophisticated cigarette lighter - but not the enchanting pack of cigarettes.That he gave up a couple of years ago as a small contribution to world health, though he reserves the right to smoke himself to death. Bookbinder reckons that he makes a fair living because “the pictures are sharp and the colour is good”.But don't make the mistake of associating this kind of photography with art. “I am by definition a commercial photographer, not an artist by any stretch of the imagination,” Bookbinder assures you.“I’m successful in identifying the positive aspects of frivolous things. I have the ability to see near beauty in trivia.’’Near beauty is not to be confused with real beauty or with reality itself - though advertising has a separate reality of its own. Nor are the renowned fashion pictures for Queen - the disjointed females sporting animal limbs and expensive shoes - accorded any retrospective respect: Bookbinder dismisses them as ‘‘second rate surrealism”.The reason for this seeming aptitude for self-denigration is that Bookbinder, like he says, takes photography very seriously, believing that the art form does exist and that it has reached its finest expression in people like Bill Brandt.He himself has a collection of “fine” photographs and is a practising artist, only he keeps this side of his work very much to himself. The two dissociated nudes we show on these pages are seen in public for the first time.London's rather lethargic pace, (in comparison with New York), permits Bookbinder to spend time on his own work, and on editorial jobs for magazines.While he freely admits he would go broke if he concentrated solely on magazines, (say £30 a commission instead of ten times as much for an advertising agency), the occasional job serves the dual purpose of making him think in a more creative way than for advertising and of keeping his name before the discerning public.However, he demands absolute freedom and personal control of the frame eventually used. His relationship with art directors tends to be stormy, though Roland Schenk at Management Today has his confidence and admiration.Bookbinder’s covers for this magazine are among the few commercial jobs he cares to remember.Basically an indoors man, working from the measured disorder of his Kensington studio. Bookbinder is also well known and well used on the Continent, where he can be found making tv commercials in Italy or taking baby pictures in France (to his continued amazement).Now that he can afford to be choosy about the kind of job he accepts, he claims that in the mellow light of Kensington and, particularly, Somerset, the quest for money has left him. He lectures periodically at the Royal College and recently tried out an eight week workshop evening course of experimental photography for students who really wanted to get to grips with technique.He is not yet sure that it will be repeated. Although successful, it was personally a painful experience - “and I try to avoid pain”.

In the same way that kids reject the music and dress codes of their parents, art directors often reject the styles and people favored by the previous generation, preferring fresh, new people, nearer their own age.So demand for Lester slows in the mid seventies.But FCO art director Graeme Norways decides against using one of the new kids on the block for his White Horse Whisky campaign, instead he chooses someone old enough to be his dad, and probably the best person on the planet for that campaign.

It's a tremendous campaign.Absolutely timeless.Lester was now back in vogue, (small ‘v’), and he started shooting commercials as well as stills.The images from his commercials are strong enough to be stills, as this front cover shows.

The images with Paul Arden for the V&A are amazing.They are made be odd, idiosyncratic little touches, like the one unvarnished fingernail or the mug positioned behind the sculpture.

His last great campaign was with Mark Reddy for Volkswagen.The idea was to shoot images that look distorted, as if being seen by someone from a speeding car.But how do you distort them in a way that looks real yet aesthetically pleasing?How do you control what you are shooting?Lester pointed the camera at a reflective piece of perspex that could be bent in or out to extend or contract the image, giving him complete control.

Throughout his career Lester shot a helluva lot of personal work, unfortunately these are the only pictures I could find. (Bought by Paul Arden.)

In our business you often hear the question ‘do they have a good eye?’ Very few have. But those that do transform. In their hands the everyday feels exotic and the familiar appears fresh. It's not logic, education or training. It's an instinct.They make subjective decisions.‘Five ice cubes look right’, ‘The face out of focus is best’, ‘Leave one fingernail naked’.Some people get those decisions right time after time.The ones with ‘an eye’.Like Lester Bookbinder.A profile of Lester by Creative Review, from February 1982.

A few months back, I chanced upon this.

It's an ad by George Lois.It caught my attention because I’d never seen it before and it looked ,from the photograph, like it was from a large, sharp image.I followed the link.More Papert Koenig Lois ads!I could see these weren't tiny pictures from an early New York Art Directors Club.

Where the hell were they from?I read the text underneath:“Some months ago, Julian Koenig died. He was the famed copywriter behind Volkswagen’s “Think Small” ad, maybe the most famous ad ever. He was also the ‘K’ in the upstart creative agency Papert Koenig Lois.I’m a lover of obituaries and read every one I could find on Koenig. I stumbled through Google to find more information. I was particularly intrigued by his decades-long feud with his ex-partner, George Lois whom, according to Koenig, took credit for work he didn’t do. In my book and Koenig’s the most heinous crime a creative can commit. (Koenig once wrote an ad attacking Lois. The headline: Low, Lower, Lois.)Somewhere along the way, I discovered that Papert Koenig Lois after its first year in business produced a hardcover book containing each of their ads done that year. They did the same after their second year. The books were entitled, appropriately enough, “Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc. The First Year” and “Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc. The Second Year.”I quickly found them on abebooks.com. The pair cost me $50 and they arrived in short order in very nearly perfect condition. I have them here, in front of me.Each volume is organized by client. The First Year (1960-1961) features work for: Ladies Home Journal, Renault, Pharmacraft Laboratories, Granada TV Networks, England, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Ronson and Dansk, among others. There are probably about 75 ads in all, many of them I recognize from old Art Directors Annuals or from George Lois’ books about, primarily, himself.Here are a few of the ones that I either recognize from annuals or I think have held up for half a century. Sorry for the crappy photographs. I took them from my iPhone and couldn’t get things quite square.The Second Year looks identical to the first. Same size. Same black linen cover. Same forest green frontispiece. Clients include: Dutch Masters cigars, Dansk, Evan-Picone, Faberge, First National Bank of Miami, The New York Herald Tribune, Peugeot, Harvey Probber, WNEW Radio, Xerox, as well as many of the clients from the previous year.I don’t know much about the further history of PKL, beyond those first two years. I assume George Lois imploded and Julian Koenig spent too much time at Aqueduct Racetrack. They scaled the heights of New York advertising, but never reached the pinnacles achieved by DDB, Carl Ally, Scali McCabe Sloves, Delahanty Kurnit & Geller and one or two others.I might be the last person on earth who’s even heard of them.Years ago, I taught some classes at New York’s School of Visual Arts in putting a portfolio together. I decided I wanted to move past stylistic trends and get to the heart of what makes a strong communication. Not what’s “hot,” what is enduringly moving and motivating.What I did what go through my trove of awards annuals from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. I picked out disparate ads then we spent the next few hours discussing their alikeness.It seems to me that PKL’s ads here are built around the basics of good communication. They are simple and clean. They make a promise. They find something human. They often flatter the reader—letting her know that we regard her as intelligent. We might even reward her for that intelligence.If this were a better world, and I were rich, I would offer to send these two books to anyone who’s interested as long as they swore to return them. The thing is, I lent them to my boss in May and only got them back around Halloween. So I’m not parting with them so easily.I think they’re esoteric. They probably have an audience of seven, mostly people interested in “Mad Men” but only because of the wardrobe. But to me, finding them was like finding a Cuneiform tablet. Nothing remarkable may be written down (they were usually tallies of goats, grains and wine) but still, they’re priceless. They tell us how we lived and how we thought.Underneath it said something like 'From PKL book I picked up'.DAMN!I quickly went on Abe Books.Nothing.Ebay - Nothing.Amazon - Nothing.I spent ages trying to figure out how to get my hands on these books.Nothing.Desperate, I contacted a guy I didn't know who was three thousand miles away to ask if I could borrow his treasured books.I then forgot about it.The guy replied: 'Sure, I'll mail them to you'How weird is that?It turned out to be George Tannenbaum, from the great adaged blog.They then turned up at my front door. He'd paid the postage!So here is the first PKL book.If you like it, thank George in the comments, what a trusting human being.

Fashion advertising isn’t like regular advertising.Attitude is as important as the ‘idea’.The photographer can more important than the writer.What you say is less important than how you say it.The font is often more important than the argument.And the gut is definitely more important than the head.It's a odd world.Paul Smith is rumoured to have been on the lookout for an agency for decades.Organising endless chemistry meetings every couple of years, but never appointing an agency, because he can never find one that ‘gets it’.Jane Trahey got fashion.She started writing ads in 1947, for Neiman-Marcus in Dallas.In 1956 she moves to New York to found 425 Advertising Associates for Julius Kayser Inc, as their in-house agency.Only a couple of years later she leaves to open Jane Trahey Associates.1958.In 1950s New York, openly lesbian women didn’t start ad agencies, Vikings probably started more than lesbians in those years.Their work was simple, stylish with a kind of sassy, New York attitude.HOFFRITZ.

WRAGGE.

D’ORSAY.

FRANKLIN SIMON.

ELIZABETH ARDEN.

BILL BLASS.

SWANSON’S ON THE PLAZA.

PALIZZIO SHOES.

ECHO SCARVES.

ROB ROY.

I. M. MILLER.

She picks a young, local illustrator for some I.M Miller ads, (and an invite), his name is Andy Warhola.

In 1959 she brings a partner to help manage the business, now growing fast.

Although Jane was a writer, really she wrote slogans. She would conjure up a handful of words for a brand to give it attitude. Those words would stay there for years, sometimes ten, in one case forty. These words would rarely be product based. More often than not they had a kind of ‘fuck you’ flavour.DYNEL. A great example of that flavour is Dynel work for a synthetic fur-like fabric. Most rational people would position it as an inexpensive alternative to real fur. That was far too mealy-mouthed and apologetic for Trahey Cadwell, they said ‘It’s not fake anything, it’s real Dynel’. (You may as well put ‘schmuck!’ at the end of that sentence.)

DYNEL FAKE HAIR.

DANSKINS.Positioning the brand as kit you can wear when not exercising.Straight to the point and with attitude.

Considering she was a writer, it’s amazing to see consistently strong the art direction is over a thirty year period.

TRIGERE.

CHARLES OF THE RITZ.

GASHINS MUSHI.

MA GRIFFE.

PARAPHERNALIA.

In the late sixties, former Haprer’s Bazaar Art Director Henry Wolf was bought in as a partner.OLIVETTI. Wolf shot and art directed these ads.

Through the seventies, Trahey continued to battle anyone still against equal rights.

In ’72 she gets involved in he National Organisation of Women. Soon after she get’s her pen out.

BLACKGLAMA.One of her last, but most famous campaigns was for the Great Lakes Mink Association. Realising that the name was too much of a mouthful, she rechristened them; ‘Blackglama’.She then figured that because the lustre of black mink didn’t show up in photographs, she needed stars to give Blackgama lustre.First she went out and got some stars, and when I say stars, I mean STARS!, then she got Richard Avedon to shoot them.

Towards the end of her life, Jane wrote and edited books and films.

“I try to find a way to get into the head of a child.”- Stephen O. Frankfurt.

His quote sounds spooky, but I guess it’s just another way of saying keep it simple and interesting. Virtually unknown today, he was a big deal in the fifties, sixties and seventies. His Mum was the secretary to the head of the Twentieth Century Fox film studio. (Sounds irrelevant, it isn’t.) He spends three years at the Pratt Institute, being ‘molded’ by Alexey Brodovitch. He leaves and visits every major studio and ad agency to try to land a job. No-one is interested in him. So he took a job as a junior in a tv company, painting animation background cells. One of the clients offered him a job at their agency; Young & Rubicam New York.He became assistant art director in a department recently opened for a new medium they were calling ‘Television’.Unlike the rest of the department, former movie production types and radio writers imported from Hollywood, he had hands on experience in animation and camera techniques.Before long he was writing and creating his own commercials. They were exceptionally graphic. What you need to bear in mind was this was the late fifties, most commercials used presenters or product demonstrations. The really creative ones would use both at the same time. Ads like the one below really stood out.

He was widely credited as ‘helping Bernbach’s creative revolution extend into TV’.He realised that TV wasn't a branch of live performance, it could be more like his first love - cinema. (Remember his mum’s job?)He started using film makers to tap into emotions.His work was starting to get noticed more and more.One of those taking notice was film director Alan J. Pakula.He asked Frankfurt to design the opening titles for ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’.

He wins an oscar. Here, he explains his thinking;

He shot a lot of commercials with Irving Penn, who said this about him; “He has always been a rarity in the advertising business. He believes that magic can happen in the film studio…and keeps his commitment to the client as loose as possible so as to make good use of a miracle should it happen.”His press and poster work was equally simple and graphic.

He does groundbreaking work for Eastern Airlines.

In 1967 he becomes President of Young & Rubicam’s New York office.Now at the time Young & Rubicam was the world’s second largest ad agency, so appointing a 36 year old to run your Head Office was brave, a 36-year-old art director was just plain nuts.

He visits his heroes; Bill Bernbach, George Lois and Arnold Varga, asking for advice on how to communicate his ideas to the department. In the process, he collected proofs of their work. He used them to create a gallery in Y&R’s art department, ttelling staff that within a year he wants to replace them with Y&R ads that were equal or better, than those on the wall. It took two years.He then got New York to ‘Give A Damn’.

Not long after he got a visit from a friend of his, film producer Robert Evans.(Remember his mum’s job?) Evans had a problem; Paramount didn't know how to sell his new film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’. “I can’t release the movie because the whole of our advertising team doesn’t know how to sell it, and the picture’s brilliant!”A viewing was set up for Frankfurt to see the film.“Bob, I’m going to tell it you straight; it’s not an easy picture to sell and I’m not going to take one dime from.”He then said “But if you buy what I give you I want one hundred thousand dollars”.Rather than design a poster, he distilled the idea of the film into a single hook, as he’d learnt in advertising.

Robert Evans: ‘I walked in to the office of Chairman of the Board, Charles Bluhdorn, and said ‘‘Take a look at this and you tell me if you want to write a cheque for one hundred thousand dollars’’. And I turned the art-board around and there it is; there’s a mountain and a carriage and it says ‘Pray for Rosemary’s Baby’, that’s all. Bluhdorn looked at it, he becomes as pale as these white shoes that I’m wearing, he said ‘I have to pay him one hundred thousand dollars for four words?!’ I said that’s right, and he did! 'Pray for Rosemary’s Baby' became the ad of the year. It made the picture, without that image people wouldn’t know what it was, they still didn’t know, but they were intrigued. It opened to the biggest business Paramount had done in years.”

Here’s is a BBC documentary on Frankfurt, an amazing snapshot of his life at the time.

The ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ experience gave Frankfurt a taste of a different life. Also, President was a very different job from the creative one he was used to. “I never had a frustrating day in that company, until I became President,”

He works on the campaign to get Mayor Linsay re-elected. A tough job, as his first stint in office was considered a disaster.Like a lot of truly great advertising, he uses the truth and gets Mayor Linsay to admit that ‘mistakes were made’, and ends with Linsay calling the job of being mayor of New York ‘the second toughest job in America’.What a great end-line.

Mayor Linsay was re-elected.In 1971, he leaves his swanky office at Y&R to set up Frankfurt Gips, with the designer Phillip Gips. His mission was ‘to see the packaging of movies as a totality—designing the titles, posters, trailers and ads with one common look and theme.’An integrated campaign, as we’d call it today.(Remember his mum's job?)

In 1974 he gets roasted, (not British footballer style), by the board of the New York Art Directors Club.

In the eighties, Frankfurt described his company’s approach:‘Clients come to us expecting to see something different.We tend to come at things in an unexpected way.We offer a point of view on a film.We try and create a strong copy line or image that everything else can be hung on...You have to reflect the film's essence.You have a generation of fast-forward kids out there zapping movies.The challenge is to find a way to be different.The people who come here to work are misfits. They don't fit in anywhere else.These people go out and have fun together at night.Bill Murray dropped by and took them all out to dinner. You can't fake that.’

Unfortunately, it’s hard to find the complete campaign for the films, but with ideas like ‘In space no-one can hear you scream’ or ‘You'll believe a man can fly’ still famous today, you have to say he fulfilled his mission.

Where did you grow up?South East LondonWhen did you take your first picture?When I was eleven.Then I asked for a camera for my fifteenth birthday.One of my brothers showed me how develop a film and to make a contact print.I was completely absorbed by photography for the next 40 years.What was your first job?Aged 18, I spent two weeks in an ice cream warehouse, at minus 20 degrees.It paid for my new darkroom.I always developed and printed my own pictures.Who did you assist?I am grateful to several photographers who gave me a chance at age 18 and 19: David Davies, Mike Goss, Mick Dean, Bob Croxford, Eric Mandel.But it was David Thorpe who had the greatest influence. I worked with him for 6 years.

What was the first image someone paid you to produce?£5 to shoot a pencil sharpener, in 1970.My first real job was for Paul Arden in 1977.He was going to be a photographer and had asked me to be his assistant.I said no, I’d been an assistant for long enough and I was going on my own.A few months later he gave me my first job, a twelve day car shoot!I was probably saved by some good retouching.

The ‘Looks aren't everything’ ad is the old ‘mechanical’, probably made with Letraset and a scalpel. I don't have a proof.I can't help but notice those weird angular shadows?Yes, that was Paul’s idea, he was very insistent that he wanted ‘square shadows’.Who was the best Art Director you worked with, and why?I couldn’t say, I worked with so many talented art directors. Bob Isherwood, Rob Morris, Alan Waldie, Neil Godfrey, Paul Arden, John Horton, Ron Brown, Nigel Rose, Cathy Heng, and many others. They had great ideas and knew what they wanted.

I wouldn’t have guessed this portrait of Dave Horry was one of yours Graham?Yes,Dave was quite resistant to appearing as nature intended.It was commissioned by Roland Schenk, a very influential designer who had adventurous tastes in photography.I was experimenting with spots and mirrors at the time, and used them for the scaly effect.I presume Irving Penn was your hero?One of them.Also Lester Bookbinder. I once asked him who’d had the greatest influence on him, he replied: ‘Penn, Penn, Penn, and ….err… Penn.’ I think Lester was in a class of his own, but he was mostly doing commercials by the time I was working.

Totally agree, I love Bookbinder’s stuff.Not being a photographer, it’s difficult to explain why they have that magical thing about them, most of the shots just simple set ups on white backgrounds.How did he do that?I wish I knew.First, he must have believed it to be possible; how do you get a horse to stand still like that, and to look down a little, no, slightly to the left, with one eye towards camera?While the people are all doing their part but without looking static.Maybe it was all done on a dye transfer or in retouching?I remember Ron Collins telling me about a shoot for Clark’s shoes with Lester, eight women in a line doing the can-can. Lester said to Ron, “I can only watch five at once, you take the three on the left.”Who else inspired you?So many...Bill Brandt, I loved his use of black, and extreme perspective, drawing you in and making you wonder what was going on in there.A good picture makes you think, and to want to look at it again and again.It does not give everything to you all at once.

Someone told me you shot Bill Brandt’s collages?That’s right, there’s a book, it’s rather rare, ‘Bill Brandt. The Assemblages’.I have one copy.In later life Bill made some collages/assemblages and made some black & white photos of them.I photographed all of those that were left, in colour in 1993, in collaboration with Zelda Cheatle, the publication has notes by Adam Lowe. Despite what you may read elsewhere, all the colour photographs are by me. (The black and white ones are by Brandt.)It was beautifully printed, but in very small numbers, about 1000 I think...or may be 2000.Highly collectible.

Ok, more names, any other influences?Well, Edward Weston.

Paul Strand.

Avedon.

Phil Marco.

Weegee.

and Penn.

Man Ray.

Hiro.

and Hans Feurer.

I also drew inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci,

Bach...

...and Beethoven.

I enjoy science and art, they both involve observation, understanding, questioning, experimenting, inventing.I always listen to music when I am working.

Was this done for real?The agency had complaints about this one, how could we be so cruel?Needless to say it was retouched. We shot the fish, and the fin was attached to a model.The two images were then put together on the computer.

Did you prefer a tight or an open brief?I always saw the layout as a starting point, often a point of departure.Most art directors could draw very well, and knew what they wanted, but not always how to achieve it, a sketch with a black felt tip pen could show the idea without being prescriptive.Art directors usually wanted some input from me if it helped to put across their idea.In later years this happened less, as clients had more control; briefs and layouts became tighter and more finished, I would sometimes be given a finished illustration and asked to recreate it on film!I usually worked with an art director in the studio, the composition had to work within a layout with just the right amount of space for copy and headlines.Sometimes art directors would turn up for a few minutes, make a comment and leave again; still life photography is not much of a spectator sport.Much of my work was a collaboration often involving model makers and background artists too, such as Gordon Aldred.The best art directors were often the most demanding and wanted to break new ground in some way.When shooting looser briefs, such as those for Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges, I had the luxury of spending one week or more on one picture, so I could try anything I wanted.Unlike today, the picture would usually be a few sheets of 10 x 8 film hopefully with little or no retouching needed.I rarely shot variations, the art director and I would make a decision and follow it through to the end.

You turned down a lot of work?Yes, hard to believe today.If I felt I could not do a good job, or had been chosen for the wrong reasons I might turn it down, I often had more work than I could manage, as I was quite slow and rarely found it easy. I preferred to do what I was good at, but on the other hand you never know what you are capable of until you try.

Which English photographers inspired you in the early days?As a teenager in the sixties I used to devour the Sunday colour supplements, which had some great photography, both editorial and advertising.The ads never credited the photographers, but Adrian Flowers,

Lester Bookbinder

and Tony May come to mind, there must have been many others.

Which ads were you most pleased with? GRAHAM: B&H ‘Goldfish’, ‘Ants’, ‘Magnet’, ‘Gold Pour’, the first Silk Cut, Absolut ‘Rome’, Levi's ‘Horse’.I also like a very early one for Holsten Pils, all done in camera, no retouching.

Also, I shot a blue envelope for Paul Arden, I think it got me a lot of work.He asked for a print of it, so I spent two weeks making a 2 meter wide cyanotype, (a blueprint), the largest contact print I ever did.

I was pleased with many pictures for Absolut Vodka, again all done for real, in-camera.

The Absolut Geneva ad would be drawn today, it would be perfect but wouldn't feel as expensive as this. Was it down to great modelmaking?One of my brothers is a clockmaker, he made the bottle, one half an inch long.The jewel was put in on the computer.

How was this shot?It was tricky. The gold was a model by Matthew Wurr, placed on glass and shot from below to avoid any reflections in the glass.

I think Paul Arden is the best Art Director Britain has produced, what was he like to work with?A man of iron whim! Not my words, but they’re very apt.He got the best out of people. (Providing they could get on with him.)He also gave me many opportunities to prove myself.He held very strong views, but they could change at any time.You did the first Silk Cut ads together, shooting a bit of silk looks easy, I bet it wasn't?Paul had several photographers working on this for weeks.I had to learn to shoot silk, how to dye it, cut it, light it, get the colour right.It was easier after the first one.To get the intense colour, Paul had the posters inked and printed twice, there was so much ink on them that they would not stick to the hoardings and started to peel at the joins.

How did you get that odd texture on the shower ad?This was shot on a little known film, Polaroid 35mm instant transparency film, it was very grainy and had fine lines across it like a TV screen.It also rendered the purple very well.We wanted a degraded image as if it was from a movie.There is a myth that 48 sheet posters have to be shot on large format. They do not.A well known photographer who shot on 35mm told me once that if the agency wanted a picture shot on large format, he would just copy it on to 5 x 4.

You turned a lot of assistants into very good photographers, The School of Graham Ford.David Thorpe worked for Bert Stern and Arnold Newman in the US.I worked for David.Jerry Oke and Eugenio Franchi worked for me.John Parker and Kevin Summers worked for Jerry.Many others carry on a certain tradition and approach adding and adapting to it all the time.David really understood advertising, having worked at DDB in New York.For him great advertising photography was the expression of a great idea, it can be self indulgent and often meaningless out of that context.The family tree is quite extensive, I am proud to be part of it.I think we have all been willing to share ideas and techniques, I have no time for secrecy.

Ever tempted to move into commercials?I tried a few times, I think one commercial I co-directed even won an award in an obscure category at Cannes! but it was not for me.I am very bad at delegating.

I can’t help noticing how shiny cars were back in the seventies and eighties?I always asked for dark cars, for that reason.

Did you meet your photography heroes, like Penn?.No, though I attended talks by Elliot Erwitt and Richard Avedon.They were totally professional, even when giving a lecture, I later thought they probably wanted to let people know that they were still approachable and available for work.

Who were your rivals?In the sense I think you mean, I only admired pictures, not photographers.Anyone who takes risks has a mixture of success and failure.There were many very good photographs published in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.I think it was a Golden Age for advertising.Ken Griffiths,

Pete Lavery,

Rolph Gobits,

Norman Parkinson,

Peter Lavery,

and Brian Griffin.

They were not rivals, but I admired their work.There were too many to mention that I did compete with in the UK, look at the D&AD annuals.Also Daniel Jounneau...

...and Francois Gillet in Europe.

I thought Nadav Kander did some remarkable work too.

Why do your pictures still look more sumptuous than most photographs today?Spending a week or more on a picture, weeks of model making and planning, 10x8 film, a handpicked group of talented people, decisions made by individuals not committees .Film is an attractive medium in itself.There is a magic, an alchemy, in the interplay between light, lens and film.I may be wrong about this, but I guess Photoshop was derived from the techniques used in making animated films, so you have layers which are overlaid on each other.Film does not work like that, black is an absence of light, it does nothing to the film,film reacts only to light, not to dark.I would leave the shutter open for five or ten minutes or more, adding one image on top of another in the dark. I don't think you can really do that in the same way with digital cameras.

I may be wrong, but I think some of Brian Griffins’ images would not be possible with a digital camera.I am fairly sure that mine would not, though there may be new developments that I am not aware of.

The colours seem denser, the blacks seem blacker?

I used to make very contrasty transparencies, ‘Chromes to weld by’ as Dave Christensen said, but they looked better in my portfolio.

When computers came in, the first thing some retouchers would do was lighten all the shadows.I was surprised when I saw some of Lester Bookbinder’s transparencies just how flat they were, but they printed beautifully.

Model making vs CGI?I have seen CGI images that are almost completely convincing.It is an interesting area, because I think it has the potential to be rigorously accurate, if one person could have ultimate control over the whole image.Once you start drawing and making things up, I think you would often be better off with an illustration.You really have to know what you are doing to be a good illustrator.

DAVE: Do you think digital technology has helped photography?Experimenting is now easier, but I see less of it?It must be good that anyone now can take a photograph and produce a usable image with little skill or forethought.I expect many imaginative people are using photography in new and adventurous ways.On the down side, it is a less exacting process, there is less at stake, it is easy to be lazy.It is also fairly easy to make very complex images using Photoshop, but so many of these are meaningless or unconvincing.I always felt the power of photography lay in its basic reality.Of course the camera has always lied, but it lied convincingly. I can never really believe in an obviously digitally manipulated image.To paraphrase Henry Wolf: Photography has the power to make an object or person seem unique, beautiful or ugly, thoughtful or desirable beyond its mere physical existence.What’s keeping you busy at the moment?These, silver vessels, each raised from a disc by hammering.

Do you collect, shoot or make them?Make them, just for fun.Amazing, they look great, thanks for sharing them Graham.