Nick Knight is near the top of my imaginary ‘photographers I’d love to commission one day’ list. I’ve been an admirer of his work ever since I laid my eyes on his series of fabulous, color-drenched images created for Yohji Yamamoto in the early nineties. Nick Knight is now the uncrowned king of the digital fashion photography with his striking, beautifully composed, digitally manipulated images that often challenge the conventions of fashion photography.

Despite being a perennial favourite with the great and the good of the fashion world he hasn’t shied away from tackling controversial issues as racism, disability and ageism within mainstream media. My favourite example being his stunning photography for a Levi’s Jeans campaign featuring the original wearers of Levi’s Jeans, some of whom were over 70 years old.

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I stumbled upon a book recently which I simply had to buy for the sheer inventiveness of the images inside it. Mixing sharp humour with a delicious edge of melancholy, ‘Little people in the city’ brings together the collected photographs of Slinkachu, a street artist who for several years has been leaving little people in the bustling city to fend for themselves, waiting to be discovered.

Flicking through the pages of this book is like discovering a whole new miniature world around us… think Land Of The Giants meets the Borrowers in the modern world. As you see page after page of these miniature statues going about their daily lives, whitewashing graffiti and moving into new homes… you really do get the sense that there could actually be miniature people living amongst us.

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Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ was the book that changed the way I looked at photography and i’m envious of anyone picking it up for the first time. The beautifully sequenced, haunting photographs in ‘The Americans’  break all technical rules of photography in favour of a spontaneous, coarsely poetic beauty that I never seem to tire of. Not bad for a book that’s over 50 years old.

‘The Americans’ was created during a Guggenheim funded road trip across America in 1956 and 1957 in which the Swiss born Frank (sometimes accompanied by his young family) set out to to document “how Americans live, have fun, eat, drive cars, work and dream”. Frank shot from the hip and worked intuitively often snatching shots surreptitiously with his hand-held 35mm Leica, using his unique outsider perspective to expose themes of power, racism, inequality, and alienation. By the end of his 10,000 mile journey (in which he himself experienced prejudice after being arrested under suspicion of being a communist spy) he had made more than 27,000 photographs and had ‘sucked a sad poem out of America onto film’ as Jack Kerouac writes in the breathless introduction that accompanies the book.

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We’ve had some pretty big books in reception over the last couple of weeks, so thanks to Tracey Gibbs and her fab collection of photography books… we have a tiny one this time. But don’t let the size fool you… these photographs are as amazing as any of the ones you may have seen in those big books!

Mick Williamson makes small, intimate photographs; with an intuitive feel for light, contrast and texture, he captures the fleeting moments of everyday life, finding beauty in the smallest scenes and details.

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Back when I got my first job in 1996, my Creative Director gave me a book to look at called ‘LaChapelle Land’ that simply astounded me. Needless to say I hunted down my own first edition numbered copy… and it takes pride of place on my bookcase at home.

‘Heaven to Hell’ is LaChapelle’s third in a trilogy that began with ‘LaChapelle Land’. The images contained within the pages and follow in the same astonishing, color-saturated, and provocative style but this time there is more of a reference to Renaissance, art history, cinema, The Bible, pornography, and the new globalized pop culture… hence the title ‘Heaven to Hell’.

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It’s not often you purchase a book so big that it comes with its own display stand. Believe it or not the version of Sumo that graces our reception is the mini version… the original release was so big that it came with its own table and broke records for weight, dimensions, and resale price!

I first came across Helmut Newton’s work when I was studying photography and was immediately captivated by his distinctive, seductive and original style. I hunted down images created by him and even had a scrapbook dedicated to images that I had found by him… images that I would try my hardest to emulate.

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Jeanloup Sieff was born in Paris on the 3^rd of November 1933. He first started taking photographs at the age of 14, after being given a camera as a birthday present. He wanted to be a film director, but became a freelance reporter were he started working for Elle in 1955, he was just 22. In 1956 he progressed as a fashion photographer and by 1966 he worked with magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Glamour, Paris-Match, plus many more. He won a number of prizes, including the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in Paris in 1981 and Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1992. He believed that if he had not received a camera as a birthday present, that he may have never been a photographer. He sadly died in Paris on the 20^th September 2000 aged just 66. Read more…

Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.

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One of the great things about my High School in Bradford wasn’t the fact that we were taught by Nuns and Priests… no it was the fact we had a Dark Room. Growing up I loved photography and so developing my own photographs was a natural progression for me and I would find that I could easily fly through a few hours thanks to some good music, a dark room and some recently taken black & white pictures that were snapped on my trusty Pentax ME… a camera I still own and love today.

One of the many Photographers that I studied at this time was a guy called Robert Capa, who was best known as a Photojournalist and documented wars including World war 2, The Arab-Israeli War and the First Indochina War. One of the reasons I loved his photographs was because of how he went against technical considerations when it came to photography and instead focused on capturing ‘the moment’… and boy! What moments he captured.

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Long hair, stubble, drives a fast car… no it’s not a rock star, it’s one of Manchester’s coolest and nicest Photographer’s, Tim Ainsworth. It’s been a while since he’s done some work for us… probably a few years, but we’re pleased to say he’s delivered a fantastic looking job for us for Swinton’s Cashback Plus.

The concept for Cashback Plus involved creating a clean graphic world populated by all the things Swinton can get you insurance for… the main idea being that the more insurance you take out with Swinton… the more Cashback you’ll get.

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