Grant Scott Interview

Interview by Mark A Phillips ARPS

After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Grant began to work solely as a photographer for a number of commercial and editorial clients in 2000. Grant is currently based in the South West of England. His work is held in the permanent collections of MOMA, New York, and in London in The Victoria & Albert Museum, The Tate and The British Library.

He founded and curates The United Nations of Photography is a meeting place for people who wish to share opinions, for those who are engaged with building the new image making and storytelling landscape and for those who want to know more. It is a home for the inquisitive, the informed and the passionate.

Grant taught at the University of Gloucestershire (UoG) for the past five years and has recently been appointed as Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator for Photography at Oxford Brookes University.

He has published a number of books on photography including: Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained: Focal Press (2014); The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography: Focal Press (2015); New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography: Bloomsbury (out in November 2019).

Grant Scott

You started your own studies in Graphic Design, so when did you first get interested in photography?

I became aware of photography in the early 1970s. My family used to get The Sunday Times with the magazine, and my father was an avid music fan; so, most Saturdays would be spent in record shops. We didn’t go to exhibitions, so my knowledge of photography stemmed from album covers. I wanted to design them and learned that I needed graphic design and the best place to do it was St Martin’s School of Art (now part of University of the Arts London). I had no idea how hard it was to get in, but via a foundation course at Wimbledon, I managed to.

The course at St Martin’s gave us a lot of freedom and a number of the graphic design course members went on to work in photography and video - people like Miles Aldridge, Platon, Jake Chessum, and Danny Barber (video commercials). During my first year I undertook a work placement at Elle Magazine and started working with professional photographers. I subsequently spent the next fifteen years art directing magazines, including Elle and Tatler, working with some of the best photographers of the last century and giving opportunities to new young photographers.

I was working with people like William Klein, Jeanloup Sieff, Richard Avedon, Glen Luchford and Corinne Day; in the studio with Nick Knight, Herb Ritts, Bailey; commissioning Abbas, Leonard Freed, Jane Bown and Don McCullin. I used to commission Don to do portraits in the 1990s, not something many would associate him with. So, my photographic education developed through watching and learning.

I worked for Tatler until I stopped working for just one magazine and started to work as a freelance art director for international brands. In 1998 I worked on Foto8 magazine with Jon Levy, art directing the first eight issues (Foto8 stopped in 2012, but there is an archive of material at: www.foto8.com/live). I started working as a full-time commissioned photographer in 2000, whilst continuing to art direct.

What made you decide to move into teaching?

In 2008 I left the country, as my wife had been given a book writing deal. At the time I was shooting for European brands, working across Europe and USA, so it didn’t matter where we lived. We ended up living at the top of a mountain in Mallorca. Then through a series of circumstances, I ended up as Creative Director at Sotheby’s. After a while in London, they wanted me to go to New York, which I didn’t want to do. Then, I was approached to be the Editor of Professional Photographer magazine in 2010 or 2011. I’d never been an editor but agreed on the grounds that I could completely relaunch it, re-direct and re-brand it for the photographers I knew. Whilst there I started to talk out about the state of photographic education in the magazine and on its podcast. That is when the Government approached me to take on the role of industry expert with the award of the Creative Skillset to university photography courses, which I did with Michael Pritchard (RPS). Through that Nick Sergeant at UoG offered me a position as senior lecturer on the Editorial and Advertising course. It was an opportunity to put my ideas into practice. The course has been very successful and last year won Association of Photographers Best Photography Course in the UK.

And so, why the recent move to Oxford Brookes?

Oxford Brookes is an opportunity for me to create something entirely new. A brand-new course. It is undergraduate only at the moment, but we will develop a post graduate course later. We are just about to start our first intake. It is a major commitment at Brookes with a £25m investment in a new building for the faculty. Importantly it is not a replica of courses previously taught.

Photography is not where it was in the 1980s, 1990s or even 2000s. It is a new environment. We need to teach photography for how it is now. The importance of education is learning from those who have done it. I didn’t study photography. I didn’t read Sontag or Barthes. I didn’t learn to use a darkroom. Terry O’Neill taught me to load a Hasselblad, and John Swannell lent me a Hasselblad, Jeanloup Sieff how to set up lights and Jane Bown taught me how to take a light reading! So, I am not seeking to create a replica of what I was taught. I believe, if you are going to teach photography, you need to teach it for where it is now, and not where it was. I teach it as a language, and not as a practice.

Many of our readers will not have the opportunity to consider a photography degree or may have completed a course many years ago… so in terms of continuing education or self-education, what do you think offer the best options?

The need for things like portfolio reviews is part of what I call the ‘false narrative’ in education. I do not care what other people think about my work. I’m not looking for reassurance or validation. Some people look to education for those things. But what we should be looking for from education, is to develop the confidence to do it on your own. I could go through all the photographers I’ve worked with; they never went for feedback or ‘crits’, they just believed in what they were doing and worked it out for themselves. And that is what good education does. It gives you the confidence to do that. If you need that reassurance then, in a sense, I would argue, that when you left education, you weren’t ready.

I get that. From my perspective in business, when you go out, you are not looking for validation. You are going out there to sell your product or service…

Yes, it is exactly the same thing. You are the product, the brand, it is your work. You have to go out and sell it. Photography is commercial, it always has been - a transaction takes place, whether it’s a self-initiated ‘art’ or commissioned image.

Coming back to self-education, then… what ‘education’ approaches would you suggest?

I love podcasts. The idea of my podcasts is to encourage people to do it themselves. Think of them along the lines of ‘Here is a thought process, what do you think?’

People often ask me for feedback, but I think that images should be judged only as successful or unsuccessful based on the context. It is more objective. Not whether I ‘like’ it. That is very subjective and not useful.

But beyond this, I think that what you might look for in photographic education depends on which strand of photography you are interested in, and your expectation of the medium. There are really two strands of photography - as a hobby or as a career.

If you are looking for a career - who is the client base? It is dictated by the photography you create, not by what you want it to be. And many people do not make that connection.

Alternatively, you can simply enjoy it as a hobby. This may be more relevant to the Society members. Here I would recommend listening to different photographers, going to talks, events and exhibitions. Looking at work in photobooks. Engage in the dialogue around photography. And in the ongoing conversation.

If you want to teach, then you might need a Master’s or PhD. Or you might enter post graduate education if you want to and you have the time and money, or you want to really explore a project. If this route is interesting to you it is important to remember that education is a people business. It is about finding the right people. Ask yourself, does he/she know everything I need to know. If not, go somewhere else. It is not about equipment, or buildings. It is about people.

But the most important thing is - if you see work you like, reach out, contact those photographers, tell them what you think about it. Email them and have a dialogue; engage in the conversation. Everyone is contactable but be nice. Just don’t ask too much. Be human and have empathy.

Your frequent podcasts on United Nations of Photography (UNP) attract a wide range of speakers… what inspired you to take on this ‘challenge’? What are you looking for in terms of speakers?

You can learn every day, from Twitter, from books, from dialogue. I did a film recently about Bill Jay (www.donotbendfilm.com). At the beginning of the film, Bill says that he would see pictures and he wouldn’t understand them, and so he would reach out and ask the photographer to explain. Everyone he reached out to was happy to talk with him.

Most of the people I contact for the podcast, are just cold calls. I don’t know them. Basically, I either know their work or know of them, and I send them an email. Or, I see something, and I think, that’s interesting, but I don’t get it. So, I want to hear what they have to say. There is no editorial control. I just ask them to record and answer the question – what does photography mean to you? in less than five minutes.

I know you have also written quite extensively on photography as a language and also on the development of a narrative. What do you see as the particular challenge?

The two most important aspects in a professional photographer are the ability to construct narrative and consistency.

You often hear that everyone is a photographer now, and everyone can take good photographs, some of the time. But if I sent someone out to tell a story about an event, they cannot do it. They need to deliver a good story from that commission.

That is what the degree education is about. It takes a few years to develop, or more correctly, for you to develop as a person and find the stories you want to tell. Those stories can be about anything you want, they can be short form or long form, but you need to create a narrative. To be able to tell a story.

The way I teach narrative is to use the book and the written word as a metaphor. You should research and then construct and tell the story as you are shooting. You carefully construct a beginning, a middle and an end. Creating visual narrative in the same way as creating a written narrative.

Even with long term projects you can do this. I did a project ‘Crash Happy’, published by Café Royal books. I spent a year photographing banger racing at Wimbledon speedway. Each week I would build the story, exactly as if I was being commissioned. So, I do not see storytelling as a selection process, but as a construction process.

Coming back to storytelling and photography as a language. It is a visual language. The camera is just a box. A tool to capture light. What is important is the story you tell.

You talked about photography as a visual language. Can you talk a little more about developing that language, or the vocabulary? In some of your podcasts you talk about ‘photosketching’ - is that related?

Photosketching, which I talk about more in my upcoming book, New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography, came about, because of my art background. If you think of artists painting or doing sculpture or ceramics… they don’t just create a masterwork. So, why is it a photographer is expected to do this by just pressing a button?

One big problem photographers have, especially many enthusiast photographers, is they are trying to create what they think is a ‘good photograph’ and the rules they follow are just a replica of what they have seen before. As I said before, I don’t believe in good or bad images, only successful or unsuccessful ones, and that comes from developing the ability to see.

The idea of photosketching is to use a camera you always have with you, your phone, and use it to sketch. Sketch things that interest you or that surprise you. It might be interesting light, a juxtaposition of textures, shapes, colours, or form. But, constantly sketch and make notes. And don’t stick to one field or subject. If you think about it, a sports person doesn’t just play their sport, they build their skills through a number of different exercises and training programmes. You don’t need to show these images, but just go through the process. Educate your eye. It is said that to be a photographer you have to educate your mind, but you have to educate your eye first. There is no point in learning how your camera works if you can’t see.

In my next book, there are 70 photographs, all shot on my phone. It’s not even a good phone and some of the pictures are not very good. It’s about saying - here I am, and I am learning too.

You have recently started a Patreon campaign to allow you to fund the creation of more UNP content… where do you see this going?

It is a combination of things. UNP costs me money to run. Some people have suggested that I get sponsors, but that comes with issues. But I need to raise some money to allow me to expand it and grow. Because it is just me and a laptop, in a shed.

So, I am asking for money, but I’m going to give you something extra for it. The Patreon campaign will provide you with access to additional material: information sheets, extra podcasts and access to my personal audio archive. It is like a community thing. And it’s cheap - the price of one cappuccino per month.

I see all these activities as part of a whole… the podcasts, the books, my university senior lecturer role, as head of photography, as a working photographer, commissioning photographers… it is all learning and education.

Links to some of Grant’s activities are included below:

www.grantscott.com

United Nations of Photography: unitednationsofphotography.com

Patreon: www.patreon.com/aphotographiclifepodcast/posts

The University Oxford Brookes undergraduate course is at: www.brookes.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/photography