20.05.10
Fashion photographer Ben Watts Interviewed
Born in London, educated in Sydney and based in New York, Ben Watts manages to bring his love for hip hop culture, skateboarding and graffiti art into his commissioned work for some of the world’s leading magazines and fashion brands. Cass Chapman finds out just how he does it.
Nubile young models stand slightly hunched in oversized hoodies and even larger sunglasses against the backdrop of an inner city. Men pose alongside graffitied walls, staring vacantly but elegantly into what must be a cement-filled sunset. Languid, lucid, black and white shots that are raw, edgy, stark yet sexy follow one after the other. Ben Watts’s images are similar and thematic, yet distinctly his: urban, hip and cool is what he does best and in such a way that sets him aside from others, leading him to shoot many a mega advertising campaign in recent years.
Born in London in 1967, his home has been New York for the past 15 years. Nowhere else on earth would be a more apt playground for a photographer who fell in love with hip hop many years ago and infiltrated its street style so beautifully into his work. Before moving to the US, Watts studied far further afield at the Sydney College of Arts in Australia. In 1995, he moved to Manhattan, where he has been shooting successfully ever since.
Watts’s sister happens to be the rather famous actress, Naomi Watts, and throughout our interview I try to ask about their relationship, how she encouraged or influenced his work, or whether his connection to her has somehow hindered his independent success. However, eventually I realise the questions are somehow inappropriate, as it becomes clear Watts earned respect from those in the music and fashion industries long before his sister was a regular presence on the silver screen. His talent is all his own and his drive unquestionable. Most people probably don’t even know of their relationship.
As Watts tells me about his college years in Sydney, it becomes obvious why his transition from student to photographer leapfrogged the assistant stage and saw him shooting for Australian Vogue and Elle without a helping hand from elder peers or teachers. “[In college], I was quite industrious and we had a studio and lights – not great stuff – but I’d bring bands down that had recording contracts, like Mental As Anything, and shoot album covers. I was in my final year of college and already shooting while also working on the door of a nightclub. So a lot of big people in the music industry or in magazines would show up and I’d always let them in.” Clearly not afraid to leap upon an opportunity, Watts would seize the moment: “Once they were in, I’d ask them if they minded sparing a moment of their time to show them my work, and they’d always give me that and then it was up to me to back it up with pictures. I guess it worked out.”
It certainly did, as his most recent commissions show. Watts’s latest shoots have included subjects such as Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Jonah Hill, Zac Efron, Matt Dillon, Michael Buble, Slash, Dick Dale, Henry Rollins, Fergie and, of course, Naomi Watts. Recent advertising campaigns include Bloomingdale’s, Next, Dockers, Tommy Hilfiger and Victoria’s Secret. Watts’s influences go back to the early days of ska, Motown, reggae and hip hop, a lot of which was made before some of those he photographs were even born. “I went to a lot of the early [hip hop] gigs: Run DMC, Beastie Boys, stuff like that. I was studying graphic design at that time. Hip hop incorporated a whole body of work, whether it was graffiti, dress style, or music, and a lot of that pulled into the graphics I did. I tried to bring the influence in anywhere I could, which led to my street style shoots.”
Watts’s interest in street culture and urban American hip hop explains a lot of the setting, style and feel of his work, seen even more clearly in his personal books. After contributing to several photography books, such as Body and Soul (2001) Tattoo Nation (2002) and History of Hip Hop (2003), among others, Watts released his own work, Big Up in 2004 and, recently, Lickshot. “In a way [Lickshot] is a continuation [of Big Up], but I think it’s perhaps a bit more sophisticated. Big Up was more urban street culture and [ Lickshot] still is a bit, but it’s a step on and includes a lot more celebrities and musicians, while still keeping the energy of what I did in Big Up. It’s another volume of one of my scrapbooks, basically.”
The names interest me and he explains that ‘big up’ is Jamaican slang for ‘respect, shout out’ and a ‘lickshot’ is basically a shot that is fired in the air in front of a sound system when a DJ puts on a good record, which really tied in with street culture and Jamaican slang, but also had reference to the photographic shot. Watts’s fascination with music, street culture and urban America is unquestionable, but how did this lead him into such a successful career in photography? “I was studying visual communication at Sydney College of Arts, which is basically a graphic design course. Photography was a choice, so I got into that side of things, but I didn’t like it at first. I was shy of it because it represented figures and I hated maths.”
It was the dark room that seduced him, apparently: “Once I got in the dark room and started taking pictures, I really got taken with it. I’d go to a nightclub and photograph lots of the people that came in, which pulled in that sort of street style thing because it would be some trendy, hip, street club.” Shy of maths he may have been, but shy of asking to photograph people he met, he wasn’t: “I’d then ask people back to my apartment to shoot them and that’s how a lot of my first portraits were taken. The only thing I didn’t dig was the developing thing. I was always so excited to get the images out straight away, but I guess that boring moment added to the excitement of printing for me.”
Watts’s mixed British-Australian background has, by his own admission, both influenced his work and, no doubt, helped in getting people to pay attention to him Stateside: “I definitely think in New York, if you come from somewhere else, people are a little bit intrigued at first, but after that, you have to back it up with talent. I think it’s good to be educated elsewhere and bring a little bit of flavour in from outside the city because, growing up here, you can fall between the cracks. Believe me, [being from abroad] will get you your first meeting, but from there after, you’re on your own. It’ll get you in the door, but it’s your business to stay in.”
As we talk, Watts’s eight-month-old daughter is sitting in his lap and, as he moves from talking about his work to talking about her, his voice melts as only a father’s would. Yet, his ambition and drive seems not to have softened with fatherhood. “For the past 15 years, I’ve been making a living doing this, but I’m always striving to do better. I say to my assistants: ‘Never use the K word: complacency.’” (He cracks himself up at this point.) “I am always striving to do better and I think that is what keeps me motivated. It’s best to be your own worst critic. I don’t necessarily share my thoughts, but I’m always wondering how I could do better with something. You can get lazy.” I ask him if he would describe himself as a perfectionist. “In some ways,” he muses, “but not to the point where I will homogenise and discount the possibility of something spontaneous or organic happening on a shoot that might take it on to a better direction. I think you can overplan and produce things to the point where you don’t allow yourself a creative leeway.”
Watts may continue to strive for something better, but he can’t deny the fact that, as a photographer, he has also managed to survive what he describes as “three or four significant changes in the industry” since he began all those years ago. Aside from the digital revolution, economically speaking, things have shifted. “Particularly in the nineties, there was a big dip in budgets and the economy,” he explains, “but if you are a serious photographer and you take your business seriously, you survive things like that. New York had too many photographers at one point, but now there are fewer clients and fewer photographers, so you wanna make sure you’re one of those people that still has a job.”
Watts is definitely still employed and has some interesting projects on the scene, none of which are based on still photography. “This month I’m directing a TV commercial. I’ve done a little before – I’m not a complete novice. I used to work as a runner for a film production company and I studied film and video in college.” He also justifies his qualification for such a job as stemming from his “cinematic, movement-orientated style. I like to think it’s a natural transition.” And at the end of the year, he’s doing something totally unexpected: “I’ve got a script I didn’t write but helped develop, and we’re pitching it to get a movie made. It’s sort of a Western on motorcycles. Metal Mulisha are a big motorcycle gang in the US with a huge fan base. They’re stunt riders – like the UFC on motorcycles. It’s hard to get independent films made right now, but the producer that I’m working with is great.”
So does Watts, like so many other photographers I have spoken to recently, see the future in film? “I think it’s the way forward now, and it’s what I keep hearing from people in the business. But you have to have the ability to direct dialogue, which a lot of photographers can’t do. A lot are stylistically brilliant, but narratively void. We’ve all seen a ton of movies that look great, but what a snooze fest!”
www.benwatts.com
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