FEATURE:
The Perfect Take
IN THIS PHOTO: PJ Harvey, Woman of the Year, Q Magazine, 2001/PHOTOS: Rankin
Celebrating Rankin at Sixty
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I will get to an interview…
IN THIS PHOTO: Rankin (photo courtesy of TIN MAN ART)
with the man himself. We celebrate artists and albums, though how often do we really talk about music photographers? I feel they are crucial in terms of capturing artists and taking these fabulous shots that say as much as the music does. In terms of the most established, legendary, respected and talented, few can match Rankin. You can see his work here, as he is still photographing artists and capturing these fabulous moments. Whether a portrait or at an award show, you get something different you do not get with other photographers. As Rankin, born John Rankin Waddell, turns sixty on 28th April, I wanted to celebrate him here. Bring in a few of his best shots. Before discussing an exhibition from 2024 that marked thirty years of his amazing photography, here is some biography around one of the greatest music photographers ever:
“His works are controversial, and therefore interesting, sometimes attractively scandalous, which causes close attention from connoisseurs of photography, professionals and admirers. Some call them banal and vulgar, others brilliant.
You may not know the name, but you've definitely seen his work. Rankin is arguably Britain's most successful export to the fashion industry and one of the world's leading photographers.
You probably won't be familiar with his face or his name, but Rankin, real name John Rankin Waddell, has left a mark on the history of fashion photography and magazines, becoming one of the most important British photographers.
Along with Jefferson Hack, he's the founder of Dazed and Confused Magazine, a cutting-edge publication, characterised by a unique and inimitable aesthetic, the result of Rankin's taste. The photographer is moreover the founder of Hunger, a biannual publication focusing on fashion and culture. Throughout his career, Rankin has shot the most famous celebs and top models of our time, as well as directed a number of music videos.
Despite the fact that the "Dazed & Confused" and "Hunger" founder doesn't think of himself as a fashion photographer.
Rankin was born John Rankin Waddell in Glasgow. His family moved to North Yorkshire following a promotion for his dad, then on to St Albans, where Rankin spent his teenage years. Seeing his output and passion for capturing images of people, you might expect him to have been immersed in art and culture from a young age, but it wasn’t something his parents were interested in, he says.
“I didn’t take any photographs till I was about 20 not because I didn’t want to, I just didn’t have any connection to that type of stuff at all. My first camera was a Ricoh.”
At school, he was good at maths so accountancy was a logical path for him to follow and his parents were happy he was going to get a proper job. But they were dismayed when he dropped out of Brighton Polytechnic and went on a photography course. His dad didn’t speak to him for 18 months but they rebuilt their relationship when he had to return to live at home.
“This shoot day was exceptional because it was at Buckingham Palace. I got a very short amount of time with her, about five minutes. I’d done my research and the main thing for me was I really wanted to get a shot of her smiling, so my focus was on that.”
Rankin has always seen photography as a way to stimulate conversation, something accessible for everybody to understand and love. He rejects pretension with straight up, humour driven concepts that poke fun at fashion and advertising, whilst working within the mediums.
IN THIS PHOTO: Sam Smith, Spectre, Writing’s on Tte Wall, 2015
Rankin has published over forty photobooks including Female Nudes (1999), Rankin Male Nudes (2000), Breeding: A Study of Sexual Ambiguity (2004), and Beautiful (2007).
“I realised quickly that I was really good at making people feel comfortable when I was taking their photograph. People are embarrassed in photographs and they feel uncomfortable, so if you’re not fuelling that, you’re displacing it… bursting the bubble.
Rankin made his name in publishing, founding the seminal monthly magazine Dazed & Confused with Jefferson Hack in 1992. It provided a platform for innovation for emerging stylists, designers, photographers and writers.
In 2001, Jefferson and Rankin launched AnOther Magazine. With a focus on fashion, originality, and distinction. In response to the expanding menswear market, in 2005 AnOther Man was introduced, combining intelligent editorial with groundbreaking design and style.
In November 2011, Rankin returned to magazine publishing with a fresh offering - The Hunger. A biannual fashion, culture and lifestyle magazine, The Hunger and its associated Hunger TV website - a video-based digital platform featuring in-depth interviews, fashion films, blogs, updates, and previews - marked Rankin's return to the fashion world with an understanding that the future is not only printed but digital too.
For Rankin, inspiration is everywhere. Rankin loves photography and classic photographers. Rankin’s fascination with photography is nurtured by his commercial work, where he breaks taboos of genres and tries something different.
During his career, a charismatic talanted photographer has published over forty photobooks. And definitely one of the most interesting and provocative of them is F*ck Y*u Rankin (2014).
Giving the finger, flipping the bird, up yours! For hundreds of years the middle finger has been the wordless insult of choice for people the world over – regardless of what phraseology you choose to accompany it. And it’s this age-old sign that Rankin has chosen to focus on in his provocative book.
IN THIS PHOTO: Spice Girls, From Behind, Big Issue, 1997
Known for his tongue-in-cheek humour, Rankin is used to the odd insult, and has been goading celebrities into giving him the finger for years. But it was a particular shot he had taken of Heidi Klum flipping the bird, published in a book, then ripped off by enterprising T-Shirt manufacturers that made this image iconic and planted the seed for what was later to become F*ck Y*u.
“The first time I saw someone wearing the t-shirt was when I was dropping my son off at school. The crazy point for me was going on holiday to Thailand, it felt like every other person was wearing one of my photos of Heidi giving me the finger!”
If photography is Rankin’s first love, then film is the lifelong relationship that he has developed and nurtured. This deep-rooted passion has led him to direct a feature film, tons of commercials, music videos, fashion films for some of the world’s biggest names.
In 2011 Rankin founded RANKIN FILM as a production company to represent him as a solo director of bespoke content for a multitude of platforms. Through RANKIN FILM, Rankin has directed dynamic and contemporary film projects for brands such as Nike, Neutrogena, L’Oreal, The British Fashion Council, Coco de Mer, and music videos for stars like Tinie Tempah, Rita Ora, and Kelis.
In recent years, Rankin has developed a strong sensorial style that has led him to move beyond fashion and beauty and into the genres of automotive, dance, and even confectionary content. This includes high profile brands such as Aston Martin, Mercedes, and Godiva.
Between 2002 and 2009, Rankin co-directed commercials, music videos and short films with Chris Cottam, including their debut feature film, The Lives of Saints. It won the Grand Jury prize at the Salento International Film Festival.
Always in step with the prevailing cultural zeitgeist, Rankin is an acclaimed photographer whose commercial images create disruptive campaigns for top global brands and whose unmistakable personal work regularly ascends to iconic status.
His is synonymous with cutting-edge portraits, his lens capturing the cultural and political figures of our age. His images have adorned the covers of Elle, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, GQ and Rolling Stone. He is equally well known for his advertising shots for the film, fashion and beauty industry.
He is equally well known for his advertising shots for the film, fashion and beauty industry. He has published magazines, more than 30 books, exhibited regularly in galleries around the world and has his own gallery in London. And his client list reads like a Who’s Who of pubic life in the UK and beyond. In short, he has a clear view from the topmost branches of the photography industry.
A tireless entrepreneur, publisher, filmmaker, and mentor, his work is published worldwide and is exhibited in galleries including MoMA, New York, and the Victoria & Albert museum, London”.
Of course, Rankin is not only a music photographer, though I think many associate him primarily with his shots of artists. In terms of the all-time great music photographers, he is up there with the likes of Ross Halfin, Danny Clinch, Annie Leibovitz, Bob Gruen, Mick Rock, and Anton Corbijn. In 2024, at TIN MAN ART, Cromwell Place, SW7, there was this amazing exhibition where the public got to look at his transformative and timeless photography in the flesh. This article charts the career of a photographer who is still producing some of the best shots out there:
“Responsible for some of the most iconic editorial shoots and album artwork of the 1990s and 2000s, Rankin has photographed the biggest British bands, including Pulp and Radiohead, pop superstars such as the Spice Girls and Dua Lipa, and cult heroes like Michael Stipe and PJ Harvey. Over a carefully curated selection of portraits, Sound Off showcases Rankin’s ability to create images that came to define the zeitgeist, as well as exploring the personalities behind each musician’s persona.
Rankin’s art has always been part of the music scene, beginning with the seminal magazine Dazed & Confused, which he set-up with Jefferson Hack in 1990. The magazine was a central part of the cultural renaissance that swept through 90s Britain, placing provocative images alongside the music, art and fashion that defined a decade. Embracing a DIY culture, the magazine was embedded in the night-club scene and featured both established stars such as David Bowie and Debbie Harry, as well as breakthrough acts like Robbie Williams and Oasis.
Music is also a vital component of Rankin’s photographic practice, with shoots usually accompanied by a loud soundtrack. Rankin’s aim has always been to give some of the power of the photographer over to the subject. By playing music and creating a unique and personal atmosphere in his studio, this honest and open approach creates space for the subject to be themselves.
Sound Off allows viewers to understand the challenges that are presented when photographing iconic figures.
IN THIS PHOTO: Keith Richards, Smokey Keith, 2002
As Rankin explains of shooting Debbie Harry,
You really have to try and push every image you’ve seen of her out of your mind when you photograph her. Everyone has seen hundreds of amazing pictures of her, you have to make a real effort to be different.
In a career that has seen him photograph everyone from royalty to rock stars, it is this ability to capture both the public and private personas that has struck chord with viewers.
As Rankin notes,
I get asked all the time what celebrities are really like. My mantra now is “They’re just people too”.
TIN MAN ART’s gallery at Cromwell Place is a fitting location to showcase this selection of Rankin portraits, particularly as the exhibition follows two sold-out shows featuring artworks by one of the photographer’s most famous subjects, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, who presented his ‘The Crow Flies’ series of landscapes, created in collaboration with artist Stanley Donwood, with TIN MAN ART last year. One of Rankin’s favourite portraits of Radiohead is included in the show.
RANKIN: Sound Off – Musicians 1990-23 charts the career of a photographer at the zenith of his art, one who was originally inspired by the album art of his childhood, and has since captured some of the most celebrated musicians of his time.
Rankin comments:
Going back through my archive, the funniest thing that struck me was how many of these images the artists didn’t like at the time. Their hair was out of place, they didn’t like the concept of the shoot, they didn’t like me. But now, how perfectly those images seem to embody who they were. It’s as if all of the little bits that make a shoot—the hair, makeup, styling—come together to codify a career through imagery.
TIN MAN ART director James Elwes comments:
Rankin’s visionary photography and publishing has transfixed music lovers for 30 years. The works in this show empower and iconise an array of musical artists—for me, there are moments where we see pop transcend into folklore”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Radiohead, OK Computer, 1997
I will end with a couple of interviews. The first is from FAD from 2024. They spoke with Rankin about the superb ‘SOUND OFF’ exhibition. I am sad that I did not go to that. I would like to think that there will be a photobook or coffee table book soon where we get a selection of his photos and commentary. A documentary around his work and words from artists who have worked with him. A tribute to this legendary photographer:
“We are connecting over your forthcoming exhibition ‘SOUND OFF’ with TIN MAN ART, focusing on musical portraits between 1990 and 2023. How did the collaboration come about?
Through Mark Westall – someone I have known for over 30 years, he set up his magazine Gspot around the same time as Jefferson Hack and I set up Dazed & Confused, and he has always maintained this opinion that I should be working more in the exhibition space. He introduced me to James Elwes, the founder of TIN MAN ART.
The problem with being a commercial photographer is that you really do move from one commission to another and despite having done eight international museum shows, I am regarded in a very different light outside the UK than I am within it.
I’m not sure people who know you as a photographer necessarily know that you set up Dazed & Confused magazine in 1990 and are equally successful in publishing as photography. Can you tell me more about your relationship to the printed image vs. the image on the printed page?
I think the best way to describe it is to look at how I have formed my career. I did my first exhibition of printed work in the Curzon Cinema in Soho during my first year BA, followed by a show at the Collection Gallery at the end of my second year – so I have always exhibited my work, and I featured more in group shows as I became better known. I have always felt that seeing my work in a show or a gallery is the ultimate goal.
Exhibitions are such an amazing opportunity to show the quality of the photographs. And because I don’t shoot on small cameras, prints can be blown up to the size of a billboard and still retain the same quality. At the same time, what I have always loved about photography is the democratisation of it, and the idea that when you shoot the Spice Girls you can have millions of fans tear it out of whatever it is printed in and put it up on their wall. I love these two sides to print and printing – they are both as important as each other. When you are making a show the whole rhythm of it is different to when you are making a magazine. Each allows you to play with scale in different ways. Both are important – they’re symbiotic.
Through Dazed and its related media, you have surrounded yourself with creative people who are trying to push the boundaries of image and art-making across different forms. Where does that rebellious spirit come from in you?
It comes from being a contrarian. I was brought up in Glasgow and “why” was my favourite question when I was a four-year-old – my parents really encouraged that. That is a very Glaswegian, Scottish thing, to be genuinely inquisitive. When I first went to college, I picked up a student magazine at the college door and when I asked who made it, the person said “We made it”. That was a revelation for me. In the past, because of my background, which was very working class, people who made adverts and art were “them”, and suddenly I saw that I could be “them”; it could be me, we. In the early 1990s, I kept saying that we needed to push the boundaries, we needed to challenge our audience, the reader, and the wider photographic establishment. And I think in a sense that comes from being a kind of Scottish contrarian but also from studying photography as an art form and the social and anthropological implications of what photography means.
How else did your time at The London College of Printing influence your practice?
I learnt a lot at college and I wanted to go and apply that to photography, but in a way that was accessible. Fashion was very seductive and it was easy to be challenging with it. I am very influenced by the body politic movement, and that definitely came into my work, but in a much more accessible way.
One of the reasons I didn’t really fit in at college is that I felt it was a bit of a bubble and the work was being created for a small audience. I wanted to create work that was for a much wider audience that could actually have an impact. There was an intent to it all – I didn’t go into it wanting to be a fashion photographer. I was influenced by conceptual art and I could see that if we brought that to portraiture and fashion, it could create a new way of looking at that world, something far beyond its surface seduction. That is why a lot of my photographs have an underlying confrontation to the subject. I am using a wide angle lens, I am very close to them, I am asking them to look through the lens to the audience, not trying to be cool. That is why my shots of Bowie are not very cool – they are much more playful, and a bit funny because that was how I was seeing him.
IN THIS PHOTO: Michael Stipe, Revolution in the Head, Dazed & Confused, Issue 68, 2000
As well as photographing musicians, you have also directed music videos; music clearly plays an important part in your life. Are there any portraits that are particularly meaningful to you?
The Rolling Stones, who are possibly my favourite band ever. Shooting them was amazing because I went to see them at Wembley when I was 16 – I went hooky from school and 20 years later I was photographing then. While my father wanted me to be an accountant, he did encourage me to do what I want. He let me break the rules, and let me skip school that day. The band are known for breaking the rules, I broke the rules to see them play, and then I got to photograph them – it completed the circle. It was like photographing a bunch of 18-year-old boys. That photograph means the most to me. Then David Bailey phoned me up and said “I fucking love that picture of the Stones”.
In looking at the earlier images in the show, I wonder if you think you could take the same kind of photograph of, say, Kylie today. What change have you experienced over the years in access to celebrity?
It is entirely different, but also exactly the same when you work with an artist who is engaged with what you are making. Kylie, Dua Lipa, Bowie, U2 – all were entirely engaged. When you shoot Kylie, there is an understanding that she respects the collaboration and has an expectation that you will succeed. There is an innate sense of it being something you do together. Actors have much more protection around them than musicians. Because they are essentially playing characters, they don’t really like showing themselves. That is why some of my better photographs of actors are of them playing up to the camera. However, a musician is a volume-controlled version of themselves. Even now, with people like Dua, she understands that. There is also a vulnerability to being a musician that comes through in photography.
Much of your work is studio based, which doesn’t always give you a great deal to work with. How do you draw personality out of your sitters?
Very rarely do I go with a pre-conceived idea. Right from the very beginning, my idea was to collaborate with my sitters to almost make it a dramatic piece as opposed to trying to capture something. I 100% worked on the basis that if you shoot against something that hasn’t got any distraction then the focus is the person. That was very much the opinion of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and David Bailey – huge influences on me in that regard. My whole approach is about saying to the person;
“We make this together. I am not going to use a picture that we don’t love together”.
And that allows me to push them, and because I was allowed to push them, I got more out of them. And when digital came along, I loved it and thought it was brilliant because it meant I could really collaborate, by showing them images as we work. The idea of photographers capturing something I find strange – I don’t get it.
Your catalogue of achievements is considerable in a career spanning three decades; you have shot major fashion campaigns, run multiple creative publications and agencies, you make films and books as well as regularly undertaking charitable work. What drives you?
It is the working-class spirit that drives me. I used to compare myself to some artists and wonder why I didn’t go down the same road, I came from a very similar place to some of the YBAs, but I think I was scared of failure and the opportunity to have a career and make money was important. I am very much influenced by my dad – he was someone that did well but always reminded me that you might not always have a house or a living.
Then, from around 2006 I stopped worrying about where my work stood. My biggest competition is with myself and wanting to be better and better. Also I have defied a lot of the conventions on how people run their careers and I attribute that to my parents giving me the confidence to reinvent myself.
Finally, what is the musical portrait you wish you had taken?
One of my favourites is David Montgomery’s photograph of Mick Jagger, which was done for Sticky Fingers and it is the most amazing photograph of Mick ever taken – he is naked holding the album cover in front of him. I bought a print of it because I just love it so much. I think David Montgomery is one of the most unheralded photographers of his generation – that picture was so brilliantly vulnerable, sexy and confident at the same time. It is a very brilliant image of a person at the height of his talent.
I work on the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards and I am always really excited to see what the young photographers are doing. Photography represents the music in a way that movies and films can’t really do – it’s very pure”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa for Hunger Magazine in 2016
Approaching sixty, the scene must be very different now for Rankin. In terms of the demand for photography and how it is taken. The influence of A.I. must be quite intense and troubling. Nativee spoke with Rankin last year about “AI and the future of image making with the legendary portrait photographer and magazine founder”. Whilst a lot of his generation of photographers might stick with the classics and not look at A.I. or discuss it, when it comes to Rankin “over the last year he has thrown himself willingly into the synthetic abyss to create FAIK, a real-life exhibition and actual physical paper-based magazine which looks at this artificial intelligence malarkey head-on”.
“For a bit of context I suppose, when you started being a professional photographer and making magazines in the early 90s, what was the process then compared to now? What were the kind of conversations going on then about what was fresh and new?
Well, we in a way bust the doors down on independent publishing. By the 90s there were only a few independents out there and we were very influenced by Andy Warhol’s Interview and by what the guys at The Face and iD were doing and what they did with Oz or Nova in the 60s—and desktop publishing technology allowed us to smash it down and go for it.
On the first day I went to college, I got the college magazine and I immediately became part of the student union that made that magazine, because I could suddenly see that I could make a magazine—that was a revelation. In a way I studied photography, but I studied magazine publishing in parallel and that allowed me to become a publisher. I always treated the magazine like a kind of art piece—like a Trojan horse that can go out into the world as this thing that you can hold and read, that has art in it.
In a way we started a bit of a revolution with a few other magazines in terms of representation, identity, identity politics, conceptual fashion, conceptual photography or art photography mixing with commercial photography. We wanted to put meaning and creative substance into a medium which had become mass produced and was almost pervasive in its kind of emptiness. We tried to put some art into that.
And everything I’ve done since then has been influenced by the fact that we were successful in making something that was a challenger in that period, and I don’t think I’ve ever really swayed away from that really. FAIK has a direct thread back to what I was doing back at that time.
“We wanted to put meaning and creative substance into a medium which had become mass produced and was almost pervasive in its kind of emptiness.”
Back then I couldn’t afford to build a set—but now you don’t have to. There was such a glass ceiling around the financial side of photography—even becoming a photographer cost a lot of money back then. I had to work three jobs when I was studying, just to earn enough money to pay for film and processing and all that stuff. And I think that’s gone—and that’s great. There’s been this democratisation of image making now—the playing field is very flat now and everybody’s starting off at the same point.
That means that you’re going to see work by extraordinary people whose minds might not have been able to explore this stuff, and I think that that’s what we tried to challenge back when we were starting. We might not have been rich, but we were coming at it like we were. We were culturally rich or confidence rich—and there’s no barrier to that anymore.
It’s suppose it’s like with music producers and how you don’t need a studio anymore. 20 years from now, what’s going on with photography? Does it still exist, or by that point are people just conjuring?
I think it does—I think there will be real photography and there will be real photographers who make pictures and the fact there’s a camera in everyone’s pocket means that people are still going to keep taking pictures. And real photography by masters of the craft will exist because I think that type of stuff lives out in any media or medium. I think, as you said, that it will be seen as having value that’s beyond what any of this stuff can do—but I think there will also be a place for this other thing. I think that authenticity will be valued very highly but I also think that it will be a rocky road for the next at least ten years before it balances itself out.
And I’m kind of up for the fight—I’m not shirking away from this stuff. I’m a photographer, I take pictures every day, I love taking pictures and I’m not scared of this AI stuff, I’m in it, I’m bending it to my will with a really vast knowledge of photography. I’ve got this curatorial ability to make work that’s much more realistic and has a theme and has consistency—I’m not doing fantasy, I think the fantasy element to it is a little bit ridiculous.
Yeah—the stuff I’ve seen is very much down the fantasy angle.
It’s also got loads of inbuilt biases.
Definitely. It always has the same look to it with that weird hyper-real sheen. But I imagine in a few months’ time it’ll be wound down a notch so it’s not so obvious.
You can say to it that you want to create a series of images like Diane Arbus—you can ask for it to give me 15 prompts to create a series. And maybe you want those images to be based on Hackney right now—to feature real people from Hackney. And it will create a series of Diane Arbus’s pictures shot in Hackney, and it can modernise them to make them feel like they look like they’re shot now. But I wouldn’t go to Midjourney and ask it that—I would go to ChatGPT, ask it to do the prompts, and then I’d go from the prompts to Midjourney to create it, or I’d go to Sora and create it immediately, and then I’d go from Sora to Midjourney to recreate it…
But does it kind of suck though? I know it can create the final image—but those Diane Arbus photos were good because they actually happened. She was a real person who went out everyday and took those photos. There’s a story there.
Yeah, of course.
I always think about Fitzcarraldo. That’s a crazy film—and they really did that—they really got that boat over that hill. If it was just made on computers, film students wouldn’t be sitting talking about it three in the morning. The real story is what makes it good.
And I think that that’s another thing that I haven’t actually said to you—one of the other things that I’ve been doing when I’ve been creating these sculptures is that I’ve been trying to write about why I’ve made them, as opposed to just pressing the button. Why did I make these? Why have I made these parodies on filters and death and, you know, all these themes that have been running through my work for 30 years? But my point is not that, my point is that most people won’t care.
So, yeah, and it’s like, do they just want the end bit—the final product?
Yeah—a mate of mine sent me a film that was all done with AI, but it had this really weird meaning to it. It was almost an art film, but made with AI, and it gave it credibility and credence. It goes back to art—what’s the best art for you as a creative—I think that’s something that makes you feel and think something. Now if anything can do that, then it’ll have the power.
If you ask me why I take photographs, it’s because they’re a capsule of something that goes out into the world, and they touch other people, and make them see the world the way that I’ve seen it, and I’ve understood it. And you can still do that with an AI image. I think people will kind of reverse into it.
It’s already happening in a really naff way—like where people might make a ‘making of’ film of an AI film—and it looks like it’s a real ‘making of’. At the moment people are saying, “look at what I did with AI—look at how good I am at this,” because they’re trying to get work out of it. But very soon it’ll tip over and they’ll stop telling you that it’s AI.
I suppose soon we’ll be beyond the conversation, and it’ll just be like, “This is just work”, in the same way someone used Photoshop, or someone used a digital camera, they don’t have to tell everyone first. That thing of whether it was AI or not will be kind of irrelevant.
There was a study done recently—they showed 109 images of human beings to 150 people and told them that around half of them were AI, and then asked them to work out which ones were real, and which ones weren’t. Around 44% of the photos were judged to be AI—but they were all real! So, the minute you use the word AI, people are already looking for it”.
I wanted to celebrate the incredible Rankin ahead of his sixtieth birthday on 28th April. The experience of having your photo taking by Rankin must stay with you for life. As he enters his seventh decade, let’s hope that we see many more incredible photos from one of the finest photographers ever. It is his music photography that especially interests me and I wanted to focus on here. There are a lot of photographers whose work I really love – including modern music photographers like Phoebe Fox -, but when it comes to Rankin, few can match…
HIS photos.
