Nick Knight

NICK KNIGHT is an enigma. So are his photographs. They have a tendency to draw you in automatically, filling your head with romanticised narcissism and are genuinely powerful images- quite a cry from the man who majored in Human Biology. This isn’t an article just to backlog Knight’s career, as interesting and successful as is it; it is to celebrate the innovative mind and creativeness Knight brings to each shoot he produces. Yes, Knight has worked for publications such as Vogue UK and US, Arena Homme, i-D, Dazed & Confused and ‘W’ Magazine and has landed advertising work with Dior, McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent and Calvin Klein – to name a few. Along with countless exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Tate Modern and The Saatchi Gallery, Knight boasts a colourful and impressive biography, and rightly so, since studying a 3 year photography course at Bournemouth & Poole University back in 1979, Knight’s early work provided an insight for photography lover’s overt, avant-garde, street cultured world.

His first book ‘Skinheads’ earned him his first award for Best Book Cover, and opened the door for 25 more awards over the past 24 years, including a 1986 ‘Magazine Publishing’ award for his ‘Back to School’ fashion story in i-D. Knight started his career shooting for The Face and i-D magazine where he tackled taboo subjects including questioning sexuality and equality in race. It was only after the success of “100 Portraits” commissioned by Terry Jones for i-D’s 5th Anniversary issue, that Art Director Marc Ascoli took a chance on Knight.

Although Ascoli had only been in charge of artistic matters at Yohji Yamamoto for two years, when he discovered Knight’s talent, he enrolled him into the fashion photography for Yamamoto’s advertising campaign and catalogue which in turn led to Knight’s contribution for Jil Sander in 1991 which lasted for a successful five seasons. However innovative Knight’s work for Yamamoto and Sander, when he began producing his work for editorial shoots, it became crystal clear that his talent lay in opening up his imagination to produce a wonderland of images that challenged and questioned fashion. Knight is a true innovator of photography, his work does not only lay in that of fashion, but in art, in the street, in nature; anywhere.

He even set up SHOWstudio.com 9 years ago as a platform for others to get involved in all creative projects attracting models, writers, filmmakers and a further mass of creative individuals to share their work. His ability to create images allows us to give him the title of an extraordinary, well, enigma.