ANDY GOTTS CELEBRITIES, UNFILTERED

INTRODUCTION BYSTEPHEN FRY

STEPHEN FRY

Norfolk 21 April 1990 Thirty years ago (and counting) I was invited by the Norfolk College of Arts and Technology to come and give a talk to students at their campus in King’s Lynn. Poor, long-suffering NORCAT had been one of the numerous institutions of learning that had suffered the misfortune of having my rebellious and tormented younger self foisted upon them. They had put up with me for two whole years – the only school or college up until that time not to expel me, a forbearance for which I will always be grateful.

I do not recall much about the talk I gave but I can remember that when it was all over, just as I was streaking to the door for a quick getaway, a shyly quiet yet somehow firmly insistent voice stopped me in my tracks.

‘Mr Fry!’

A young student, his eyes alight with determination, blinked up at me. ‘Can I photograph you please? I will be remarkably quick, I promise.’

I’ll let you into a secret, I absolutely hate being photographed. My usually equable (or so I like to think) good nature is frayed and ruffled by even the friendliest and most quietly efficient photographers. If they talk too much I get irked, if they are too silent I work myself up into believing them rude. I try to overcome or at least hide these wholly unreasonable feelings of animosity and resentment that surge and swill around inside me when submitting myself to the lens, but this antipathy does mean that when I am asked to sit for a portrait that isn’t a contractual publicity obligation I always say no.

If you had told me that I would meekly allow myself to be steered by a student photographer, an inexperienced amateur, into a prepared and well-lighted little makeshift studio without a murmur of protest, I would never have believed you. But we all have instincts, and there was something in this young man’s manner that told me (doubtless at a very deep subconscious

8

level) that he was the real thing. If you are in the public eye you very quickly develop a nose for what one might call cheap people, those who are mostly interested in gossip, glamour and all the trappings that go with celebrity. This young man was clearly not about to ask me when the next series of Blackadder was due or what Rik Mayall was ‘really like’ – he was absorbed only in the shot, the angles, the light, the skin tones, the face and, maybe, what lived behind the face. He avoided – instinctively I had to suppose – all the mannerisms and behaviours that grate. No gushing compliments, but no over-casual nonchalance either. No babbling, but no cold silence. No clumsiness, no self-conscious fussiness, no cool posing, no nerdy awkwardness. I can’t tell you how rare this is. The photographers one adores and who even become friends, the Terry O’Neills of this world, are loved because of the ease and sweetness of their personality as much as for their skill. Indeed, when it comes to portraiture you cannot separate technique and talent from personality. As I say, this was all very subconscious and when a handful of minutes later (he was as good as his word) I left this young man’s temporary little studio space, I did not actively say to myself, ‘I shall look out for this Andy Gotts fellow. I will hear his name again’ – it was more that I had sat for him because I had sensed that he had It.

This book shows that, for once in my life, I was damned right. Andy Gotts has It in spades. He has shot more ‘celebrities’ than David Bailey, Lord Snowdon and Annie Leibovitz combined yet a quick riffle through these pages will show you that it isn’t because he produces flattering studio-approved beauty shots. So what can his secret be?

I gave up trying to define or explain It a long time ago, in whatever field It may be encountered. Thousands of hours of practice, application, diligence and dedication? You bet. Is it 5 per cent inspiration, 95 per cent perspiration? Naturally. Luck? Of course. Personality? For sure. All these necessarily play a part in making up the successful portrait photographer, just as they do in making up the successful actor, business executive, politician, tennis player or parent, friend or lover come to that. But a quality that is often overlooked (perhaps because it seems so subjective and so impossible to define) is likeability. It’s 80 per cent of a George Clooney or Tom Hanks say, and it’s certainly a large part of Andy’s makeup. Tony Curtis, John Hurt, Ian McKellen, the Pythons… they all just liked Andy Gotts. Which means they’d stay patiently under the lights that much longer, they’d go along with a weird idea that much more willingly – and the results speak for themselves.

This likeability does not mean that Andy’s work is bland, sweet and flattering. His vision remains always clear and unflinching. Pitiless, even. He is not a glamour photographer like Mario Testino for example, nor does he create scenarios and devise settings and single-moment dramas like Lord Snowdon. His forte is the absolutely direct, black-and-white portrait, full-on, sometimes grainy and remorseless in the detailing of complexion, sometimes mischievously witty and unexpected, always completely unforgettable. He reveals the blemishes, craters, wrinkles and all the marks of age and ill-use that the human skin can carry. But not for the sake of it. There’s a love and respect in such intimate authenticity and his subjects know that. Actors are a vain lot, but our vanity is directed not towards regularity and smoothness; we love the camera to catch our inward complexities and energies, to reveal a life behind the eyes. That is what real portraiture can offer, and of this Andy Gotts is the acknowledged master.

I am very proud of my discovery, but completely aware that my moment of minutes in King’s Lynn in 1990 had nothing to do with his irresistible and inevitable rise to the very top.

That Andy has dedicated his career and focussed his energies more towards charitable causes than to the acquisition of personal riches and fame is one more reason to be proud of such a remarkable artist, hero and friend.