EDITORIAL:
Issue 81 — Winter 2014
Issue 81 — Winter 2014
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For many photographers there is a difference between the work they make commercially and their 'personal work'. However, this distinction belies the fact that photographs produced to a brief can nevertheless be creative or that pictures made for the most practical reasons can be interesting to a wider audience. In this issue we speak to editors, creative directors and photographers who work with photography with specific ends in mind, be it medical photography, architectural photography or 3D photography to be viewed on tablet computers. In each case we wanted to know how the purpose to which the pictures would be put dictated the way they were made.
In many cases there is a continuity between the work a photographer is paid to make and what they do in their own time. Jason Wilde worked as a 'door-to-door photographer', during which time he took eighteen portraits a day, taking twenty minutes on each. Employing the designated set-up of a medium format camera, a flash gun, two backdrops and a sheepskin rug he negotiated with animals, children and irate parents. He explains how this all-consuming process inspired him to find his own way to make pictures under pressure.
Niall O'Brien worked as an assistant to Sam Taylor-Wood before setting out on his own. He explains the process involved in photographing the England rugby team for Lucozade and the importance of scale in the resulting image, and his work for fashion label Alexander McQueen which was both the stimulus for and an extension of his personal projects.
Finally Colin Graham has spoken to Amelia Stein about her work as a theatre photographer. What Stein photographed was "dependent on a kind of discretion, knowing just how much of the play to expose, to record, to celebrate". For Stein it is some of the practicalities of the late night dash to Dublin from productions in Wexford to get films processed and contact sheets produced that still haunt her.
— The Editors