09.08.10
Michael Rand - Art Director, Sunday Times
During your time as the art director of The Sunday Times Magazine how did you approach commissioning photography?
I came from a newspaper where traditionally an art director didn’t commission very much photography, so at first I was on a learning curve. As far as reportage went, I relied considerably on the picture editor, Christopher Angeloglou, in the beginning. At the time, being a pioneer colour supplement, it wasn’t quite clear to us or to anybody else, what editorial direction we were supposed to be taking. However, we soon realised that one of its key features was that it should be a superb platform for photography. So the picture editor was continually searching for new talent for us. Later I developed relationships with many photographers who realised we would give them the best showcase for their work, such as Sebastião Salgado, whose powerful story on the plight of the workers in the Brazilian goldmines was a revelation.
How do you recognise a great photographer and what are you looking for in their work?
I was hoping to see something unique. I wanted the pleasure of discovering new talents. I hope that I was open-minded to all forms of photography. I haven’t got any rationale for looking at pictures, but you just want to see something that stirs you emotionally or knocks your socks off with its power. Or is just beautifully informative.
There is a belief among some of the photographers from the sixties with whom you were working that when the editorship changed on the magazine and it became more lifestyle focused that it was no longer a home for true photography. What are your feelings about that?
My feelings were that the pressures to make it more widely read and to attract advertisers were too hard on us. It is always a mistake to go running after the advertisers and to try to impress them. We had established ourselves by our own approach and solution to what to put into a colour supplement and we gradually learnt how to use it editorially to make it, like Picture Post, a great vehicle for photography. But the lifestyle side of the magazine came when newspapers and magazines were in an economic trough and sales of advertising were going down. At that point there were editorial changes and a new editor was appointed. The editor of the newspaper, Harry Evans, was being pressured to change the magazine in order to attract more advertising and they thought that a lifestyle approach was the solution. Up to that time we had made a success of the magazine by introducing documentary and reportage photography which the public liked and admired. It was sad that it didn’t continue in this vein and that an element of superficiality was to take over.
Over such a long period how did you feel that photography and photographers developed?
I think the concept of the magazine as envisaged by the management was one of a luxury magazine with glamorous ads, which indeed it had. The glamorous ads and their design, in a sense, reflected the style and quality of the magazine. So you had to create a strong editorial content. And many of us thought it ought to be journalistic; there were plenty of things you could do without a deadline – investigative journalism, reporting journalism. And probably it was typified by the work of Don McCullin. The concept as far as the management was concerned was of an addition to the newspaper and we felt that we wanted it to be a picture-led magazine and to do reportage in that way. The photographers we used developed because the magazine gave them the freedom to do so; we gave them the space and the editorial commitment.
Are you looking for something different in an editorial image than, say, an advertising image?
Yes, in an editorial image you’re looking for the truth and a photographer’s view in revealing something. You’re looking through the photographer’s eye. And that is the skill of the photographer – how he’s reacting to a situation and translating it into an image. Principally, advertising is much more glamorous and seductive depending on the subject, although sometimes it takes a documentary approach.
How did the photography influence the design of the magazine?
Completely. Discussing the design of the magazine is a somewhat self-conscious thing because it implies that you are trying to impose the design of the magazine on the editorial content. The design evolves by editing and projecting the pictures without gimmicks but just showing them and putting some pace into the layouts. The editorial content must be the all-important thing so you simplify, simplify all the time. For instance, in the late sixties we did a photo essay by Bruce Davidson about the ghetto dwellers on East 100th Street in Harlem – wonderful pictures. It was a city block which was going to be demolished and there were all these people who were going to be made homeless. It was a picture essay on the plight of poverty-stricken people in a very affluent city. The pictures were very strong and you just laid them out in the best possible way and the only way to do that was to lay them out simply. And that’s the design. The pictures impose the design – it’s simplicity, it’s getting the information over and that was the photographer’s eye, that was his empathy with the subject that he wanted to show. And he did that very movingly.
Many photographers were inspired to be photographers by the magazine and the work you commissioned. Were you aware of this at the time?
We slowly realised our influence and the advertisers did as well. It was a question of realising that we were doing things right. We were doing that by presenting photo essays by brilliant photographers such as Philip Jones Griffiths, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, Eve Arnold, Brian Duffy and David Montgomery, among others.
What words of advice would you have for a photographer today?
That’s a difficult one – it’s very hard for photographers today and it’s amazing just how many of them are working and what they are doing and where they are getting an outlet for their work. They want to appear in magazines and newspapers, they want their work to be seen and I’m very encouraged by the number of photographers who are our working and doing it. I would advise them, above all, to observe and use their minds and also their guts through the lens of the camera. It is connected to them when they are working on a project or a story and their mind is interpreting it and their guts are reacting emotionally to what they are seeing. And I would just say to them to take pictures honestly. Don’t contrive. In presenting their work the message is simplify, simplify, simplify. And, by the way, pictures need captions!
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