Art&dealramshergillaugust2013

International

Rajesh Punj

JULY 2013 art&deal

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RAM SHERGILL Everything Beautiful &

Angela Dunn wearing Andrew Heather', Fashion Weekly cover"

Meeting previously at a Sotheby’s opening of the work of Indian designers Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, Ram Shergill was their chosen photographer, delivering lavish photo-visuals for a major publication that celebrated the grandiose work of the two stalwart fashion designers. Shergill was chaperoned by two young PR girls, who were as polite as they appeared competent; and it is here that I introduced myself to the Elvis styled British Asian photographer. In a glorious evening jacket and sequined shoes Shergill strides over the heavy redcarpet, and through the exhibition, eventually handing me a card and suggested we meet again to talk more.

His generosity was further demonstrated by his wish to walk me through the auction of accomplished styled clothing and large scale photographers. Besides the works to commission for the aforementioned publication, Shergill had produced a whole series of vast photographs that were composed in the style of the Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Caravaggio; in near darkness his figures rise to a summit, that recall the anguish and torment rendered so definitely by Caravaggio in Italy in the late 16th century. These works and Shergill’s position on the international photographic scene suggest someone who has grafted for his moment in the limelight, and he apologies little for wanting his own vision to prevail. Meeting Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla was for Shergill a defining moment in his maturing career, a “homecoming” as he describes it, and for him their new found relationship has become a fundamental lynch-pin for his own work. Shergill was given carte blanche to photograph their costumes as he saw fit, and it proved a revelation for a photographer more accustomed to the more rigid dogma of European and American art practice. ‘Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla have such impeccable taste, which was similar to the high couture style of Isabella Blow and Philip Treacy, but in India their talent and eccentricityproved more satisfying; it was my homecoming.’

Returning to see Ram Shergill at his studio/apartment in central London, we arrange a very civilized tea and dark chocolate biscuit fueled conversation. I root

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out my compact dictaphone before we play around in idle conversation about the weather, his recent photo-shoot away in Istanbul, and my lack of availability, before I ask him to explain himself, to enlighten the audience of his position among some of the most revered fashion photographers working today. Shergill is comfortable acknowledging his achievements and sees them as a consequence of his eye for everything beautiful; because at his core it becomes apparent he is a fervent optimist. Dare I say it but isn’t beauty wholly unfashionable in the fashion industry, especially when given to considering his early associations with the likes of British magazine editor Isabella Blow and major British designer Alexander McQueen, who saw beauty in the morbid and the macabre? Shergill describes it ‘as a time when fashion photography was championed by the likes of Corrine Day who approved of the “grunge” aesthetic’. Shergill agrees whole-heartedly, as he begins his interview by explaining those early chance encounters that lead him to abandon a less than committed interest in business and accounts for a career in photography.

A British Asian, Shergill was bought up valuing a good education, numbers and figures were the byword for a healthy future. Tutored by his father, a mathematics teacher, Shergill proved an accomplished mathematician, but it interested him little and as he goes on to say, ‘I couldn’t feel myself and I fear I couldn’t express myself ’. That and his poor eyesight as a child and initial use of glasses proved an epiphany for the would-be photographer, as his corrected vision lead to his experiencing moments of light filled wonder; For Shergill it proved to be ‘a visual orgy of the senses and of seeing people, everything was beautiful, as if my eyes had been shut for so long’.

As Shergill enthused over his new-found eye-sight I likened it to the aging French impressionist Claude Monet losing his sight day by day as he rendered the lily-pond over and over again from his garden in Givenchy.

For Shergill his attraction for beauty coupled with a born again zeal for seeing everything in all of their true colours, lead him to languish in the college library, where for hours and often days at time he would pour of the pages of the encyclopedic photography books. Big hard-backed volumes of pictures that were lined up in the arts sections, on the other side of the library. Shergill recalls ‘there was a very famous set of photographs there in a book by

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Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla in Sahara Desert

the American photographer Dorothea Langeof the Great Depression.’ Photographs of bleached out landscapes with figures that might well have been pulled out of the pages of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

For a disillusioned student filling time, his initial intrigue and prolonged interest in Lange’s photographs drew him into another world entirely. The enduring power of such engaging imagery, as had been depicted by Lange, affected Shergill beyond his idle association to college and well beyond any cultural and social obligations to read mathematics, and it set in motion his fledgling interest in a profession he knew very little about.Looking at the German British photographer Bill Brandt and American Edward Weston, Shergill quickly and rather methodically acquired a vocabulary for ‘the photographer’s photographer’ as he puts it, by pouring over the books. His college library was attached to the art department and as fatewould have it Shergill happened upon a photography class lead by an animated tutor, and as he loitered in the doorway deciding upon what to do, Shergill was invited to come in and have a go. Sitting in on a class he was initially invited to takes rolls of film and enjoy shooting, and for the would-be photography it proved permission to capture the most beautiful Indian girls at college on film and invite the most handsome boys who gathered outside the canteen to pose for him.

Photographing more regularly Shergill managed to produce a competent portfolio that lead to his registering and passing

photography A-level. Almost by default Shergill returned to business studies at university by aid of his photography course, but failed to engage in anything other than his ability for taking good pictures, and his time wasn’t wasted entirely as he explains how he developed a natural want to take photographs.

Moving from one university to another Shergill had a first project to photograph hats, hair make-up and jewelry, and it was a moment that lead the photographer to contact the London based milliner Philip Treacy. Shergill was honestly unaware at the time what a milliner was, but went about approaching him with a bullishness that proved his confidence for the world in which he was about to enter. Treacy initially rejected his approach to see his hat collection, but tellingly Shergill,the tough street wise Indian kid, as he coined himself, lifted the telephone receiver again and called him back after ten long minutes and said, and here Shergill emphasizes his words, ‘did you not appreciate it when someone first helped you’, Shergill then mentions how Tracey went silent, pondered what was being said and finally suggested Shergill come down to the studio and use one his hatsone at a time for his assigned shoot. Inspired by the American fashion photographer Herb Ritts, Shergill borrowed Treacy’s hats one by one and photographed them close to his then studio off Elizabeth Street in central London.

In a seasoned church yard Shergill noticeda white wall and rays of bright sunlight poring over the doorway of the church.

Impromptued for Shergill it proved the right ingredients for his

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first significant shoot. ‘I used that as my studio, I had a model, who was a friend of a friend, I had these fabulous hats, and clothing I organised and we managed to do a brilliant shoot.’ Coming back to Treacy’s studio after shooting twenty or more hats Shergill walked past the late Isabella Blow, in a room attached to the stairwell. ‘She was dressed to the hilt, clothing and a hat with transparent pipes protruding from it, a silk gown, wonderful shoes, and lipstick smeared over her face, clapping a porcelain cigarette holder with a small coloured cigarette attached to it’. Which she would later describe as a layer of protect. She was utterly white, powered or pale, he wasn’t entirely sure. ‘My dear boy’, she said ‘are you Indian?“yes I am”, Shergill replied, ‘well all my family live in Sri Lanka, you must come and you must come to my apartment after your shoot upstairs.’For Shergill it was another turn in an extraordinary day and he accepted the invitation without due consideration. An Alice in Wonderlandmoment as Shergill described it.

Immediately after the shoot Shergill walked the half distance from Treacy’s studio to Isabella Blow’s apartment, let in by Blow herself he recalls she was on the telephone to American Vogue, in which shewas labouring over the details for a major forth-coming shoot.; ‘the temperature of the bath water was mentioned, the quality of the steak, sparkling water over still, and the models she had assigned for it’. Quite by surprise turning to Shergill, who felt a little out of place, she asked him if he wished for a small biscuit whilst also offered him a handful of money; he took the pale biscuit but declined the money. Blow shuffled him to the door after the briefest of conversations and suggested they stay in touch, and it was then that Shergill flattered her ghostly ego by requesting he photograph her in all her pomp and ceremony. Blow professed her ugliness time and time again, and told him to photograph her sister-in-law Selina instead. Dutifully some weeks later Shergill contacted Selina Blow, who was herself a designer, and she duly obliged to let him photograph her collection.

It was a surreal situation for a young Indian photographer, yet at no time does Shergill confess to feeling out of his depth. Meeting Philip Treacy and Isabella Blow in the same afternoon, invited to photograph Selina Blow, and then more significantly Shergill goes onto mention meeting the late British designer Alexander McQueen in the adjoining basement studio to Selina Blow.

Shergill appears to emphasis his not being fully aware of who any of these people were at the

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time, which made it much easier to be among them, and to talk freely of his desire to photograph them. McQueen he says was scruffy, his trousers loosely hanging from his waist, his shirt torn and undone, with tight-cropped hair he appeared almost threatening, and Selina introduced him as ‘Alexander the Great’. In awkward conversation McQueen declared his dislike for Shergill’s photographs of Selina’s collection, and pulled him over to a portfolio of the work of American photographer JoelPeter Witkin, which proved to be some of the most macabre images Shergill had ever seen. Two decapitated heads in a bleached out black and white photograph, pressed together as one, a naked figure wrestling a dog in another; they were for McQueen the basis for his work at the time and it proved quite a culture shock for Shergill to have been privy to the inner ideas of a future messiah of fashion. Remember Shergill had declared himself drawn to beauty and here he was being exposed to everything quite the contrary.

Shergill describes how Isabella Blow, the eccentric women whom he had meet by chance in the same building as Treacy, dressed in regal clothing and a dapper hat, had taken McQueen under her wing, nourishing his raw talent, as she had Philip Treacy’s and was possibly about to do with Ram Shergill.

Such encounters are the stuff of dreams and the photographer

recalls how the days and weeks immediately after his initially meeting McQueen and Blow, he couldn’t sleep, seeing macabre compositions in his head, and Shergill honestly saw that recurring dream as the seed for a much darker set of influences to come.

Invited to photograph a student collection based on Jack the Ripper, Shergill tellingly recalls his conversation with Alexander McQueen and the distressing macabre images photographed by Peter Witkin, and Shergill set in motion a body of work that drew attention to his natural ability with the camera. Adrian Clark, now of London Mode,saw his work for the ‘Jack the Ripper’ project on the cover of a university publication, (which at the time were Shergill’s primary source of commissions before being recruited by major international magazines); in which Shergill had a leading London model of the time dressed in dark morose clothing with artificial feathered wings protruding from her back and a deathly mask, as the principle image eluding to ideas of Ripper, and in conversation Shergill recalls how Clark duly asked him if he could use the photograph for the cover of his own publication, Fashion Weekly, which was a trade publication at the time. The cover published, Shergill absorbed all the interest that followed. Some weeks later Shergill attended the Royal College of Art fashion

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Cover of India Fantastique book with Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla "

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Creative review with Ziad Ghanem India Fantastique with Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla

show, McQueen was present, a rising star by then and Shergill has shuffled in at the back, Shergill didn’t actually have a ticket but passed off as a student and managed to walk into the show, and Shergill recalls how McQueen looked over in his direction several times during the entire show. It unnerved him a little but he considered it a possible misunderstanding. But, and at this point Shergill rises his voice to emphasis his point and duly moved forward across thesofa, ‘McQueen came up to me and said I need to talk to you, and whilst McQueen was surrounded by leading figures from fashion wanting his attention, he rooted Shergill to the spot and said, ‘I thought your photograph for the cover of Fashion Weekly was incredible, and you can work with me anytime; that was what I was on about when I showed you those dark Peter-Witkin photographs.’

It was the beginning of something; Shergill had been endorsed by none other than Alexander McQueen and his relationship with Isabella Blow had almost certainly been cemented. For Shergill it was the turning point, as he describes it, ‘to be part of that group, or even to be someone who wasn’t fully with them but was to have been influenced by those very talented people proved amazing.’ Ironically for Shergill those heady heights were qualified by his still feeling like the outsider looking in; ‘the kid who wasn’t allowed in’. But the tide was definitely turning in his favor. With the cover complete and his presence felt, Blow instructed, insisted even, that Shergill go to British Vogue with his portfolio.

And as much as Blow had championed Shergill she would

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also give him a dressing down, telling him on one occasion, in no uncertain terms that his work was very accomplished and of interest, but his presentation skills left a lot to be desired; and it without his consciously being aware of it, Shergill recalls his speaking with her often; calling her and discussing his work, in terms of his being a protégée. After the Fashion Weekly cover, Adrian Clark and Harriet Quick sort to book him all the time and insisted Shergill work for them pretty much full time. For Fashion Weekly he was required to produce some fifty-two covered per year, and already he felt in demand and describes how in those early days of his being commissioned for major jobs, he was having to print and hand deliver his photographs to Clark time on time not entirely sure if the print was even make the cover every time.

Rooted to his sofa by the open window, the sunlight illuminating his compact apartment, Shergill fondly described Clark as the ‘tour de force of fashion’; as I mentally mark up another leading light that Shergill had crossed paths with in his early career and our entire conversation unfolds as if fatewere his close friend. Yet Shergill would protest to any idle notion that circumstance had delivered his fortune to him, given to taking about his career the British Indian photographer would want us to believe that ‘you create your own luck’; going further to say ‘if I hadn’t been ballsy enough to say I want to do it, I wouldn’t be here doing what I am doing now.’

Ram Shergill sees much of his work now as private tributes to those celebrated individuals he originally met over the weeks

and months after attending Philip Treacy’s studio, and possibly it all goes back to his having called Treacy once and then again; when nomight have been enough of an answer, Shergill reached deep inside himself for a gutsy repost that altered his life entirely; and very modestly he talks of how he is now often called by Treacy in return and is complimented on his work and invited for possible collaborations, ad more touchingly how days before our meeting for the interview Selina Blow had called to do a photo-shoot at Isabella and Selina’s family castle in Gloucestershire. Shergill sees it as quite an emotional thing to do, but something that is entirely necessary, in order he understand more of the woman who influenced his pedigree. Shergill talks more and more about Selina Blow being Isabella sister-in-law, and her roots in nobility and there ancestral home being in Sri Lanka, and Isabella’s life being portrayed on film, and quite frankly any hesitation he might of had of feeling an outsider looking in was laid to rest when Selina inviting him to attend the family home for a tribute shoot to Isabella.

Shergill sees the circumstantial reasoning for everything happening as it did, all to do with timing, and for him meeting Blow, McQueen, and Treacy, among others, was about their not being quite at their peak, and his arriving on the scene when those such encounters and happenings were still possible, and then he breaks from that deep seated thread of the conversation for something else entirely, talking quite elegantly about his love of Bollywood; the photographer behind many of the leading photoshoots in India now, Shergill recalls the garish technicolor moving

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pictures of his childhood, growing up with seminal films like 1975’s Sholay, theall action movies, its attractive colours and dance routines inspired him to look for beauty in life. Shergill draws everything back together by suggesting his familiarity with the colour and verve of Indian film attracted him to the same dramatic eccentricities that Blow and McQueen were prone to showing at the time.

Shergill goes onto mention Vogue’s Hamish Bowles and British designer Vivienne Westwood as later influences but returns to explain his association with Alexander McQueen, as among those he followed subsequently, and with McQueen there does appear to be some regret that they never had a serious opportunity to collaborate, in the short time McQueen was alive. And now as much as Shergill lords his time within the fashion industry, he still emphasizes his unease with the whole situation, and he perceives his being Indian meant he was always kept at arm’s length. For Shergill to be wanted by this kind of industry was about belonging to an inner circle’, and possible all of the international photoshoots, the celebrity prints, the publications and his travelling extensively, is his wrestling for a place at the high table.

Shergill is fast becoming a collectable brand in the making, absorbed by international campaigns, photographing A-list celebrities, working for leading fashion publications. He has described the success of Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla’s book, with openings in London and Paris, as having prompted him to want to organise a major exhibition of his own works for 2014; a retrospective or a survey of his work to date.

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