Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low have been photographing together as the duo Anderson & Low for over 30 years. As the decades pass their combined photographic imagination and craftsmanship evolves further and further to the imaginative.

How does your photographic vision combine, and why photography?

”We both have a deep love of all forms of visual art, and when we decided to work together we made a deliberate decision that we wanted to create a legacy of work that would live beyond us. Pure, traditional photography is something that we both loved anyway, and it seemed very natural to us to explore the possibilities of black & white photography together in early projects.

But we have never felt limited by the perceived boundaries and parameters of photography, so even when we were making black and white prints in the darkroom we always wanted to find ways to push the images further. Perhaps that is why, right from the start, people told us that our work looks painterly. We were always more concerned to express the truth that we saw, rather than simply make ’correct’ images. We always asked “Is there some way that we can make this image say more?”.

One way this became apparent is that from early on we used to make our own chemistry for printing, and did not rely on standard, pre-made chemistry. So from very early on, our prints did not look like normal photographs.”

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”There is a whole world of stimuli, and endless created ideas as well. No limits!”

Your photo art stuns the beholder, making them wonder what’s real and what’s fantasy, almost stopping them in their tracks. Can you recall something or someone that has had that effect on you? An early influence that pushed you to examine the unexpected?

”One was the initial impetus for Manga Dreams: in 2004 seeing so many kids in South East Asia with hair styles clearly inspired by Manga and Anime. It was like being in a parallel universe! That is why we knew we had to respond with a very exciting, visually stimulating project.

It is definitely true that we are very interested in the intersection between fantasy and reality and we use this explicitly in projects like Voyages and Manga Dreams and Spectre, but in very different ways for each different project.

Regarding fantasy: we love to make the viewers ask themselves ’What am I really looking at?’ And because we tend to push so far with image-making and the results often don’t resemble photography, perhaps we end up challenging peoples’ expectations of what a photograph actually is, and what it is ’supposed to do’.

Some of our projects are extremely photo-realistic, others are the opposite. It’s just a matter of deciding what you want to say, and then finding the best vocabulary to say it.”

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”We love to make the viewers ask themselves ’What am I really looking at?’ We tend to push so far with image-making and the results often don’t resemble photography.”

Please explain how you stumbled upon those ship models in Voyages. Did someone point them out to you?

We were walking through the storage facility of the Science Museum, because we were interested in the architecture of this huge, Victorian building. And we found the ship models in one of the rooms. Nobody pointed them out to us as deserving special attention.

At first glance, and even the second and third glance, the Voyages photographs can be mistaken for oil paintings. Is that a eureka moment for you as photographers — when a setting, pattern, or object looks imaginary to the eye?

We were drawn to the ship models, in their crates, wrapped in opaque plastic. There was something there, something intriguing, hypnotic, other-worldly, but we had not defined it until we took a photo on our phone that this crystallised. That was when we realised that the opaque plastic had refocussed vision — not on the structure of these models, but on their souls — they were all on epic quests, mythic voyages. They looked like ships at sea, and more specifically they looked like paintings of ships at sea. We thought of Jason and the Argonauts, Odysseus tied to the mast, the Flying Dutchman, Sinbad, and so on.

That magical and poetic world, filled with incredible power, beauty and storytelling was there for everyone to see — but nobody else saw it. All they saw were ship models, in crates, wrapped in plastic. And all we did was photograph ship models, in crates, wrapped in plastic — but in photographing them, we set them free to sail. The curator in charge of the models wrote in the book Voyages ’I thought I knew the collection but Anderson & Low have shown me that I did not. I had taken it for granted, but now I am in love again’. That says it all.
Like we said before, this was simply a question of finding the right visual expression for these ’inner lives’.”

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You’ve built up different sets and researched locations for photography sessions before, often for a portrait of an object to take the limelight in them. For the Spectre: sets series, how was it to capture a planned and choreographed setting, and nothing else? How do you put the set itself in focus?

”When we were invited to create an art project around Spectre, we knew we wanted to concentrate on these vast sets, created in such obsessive detail. We wanted to show both the fantasy and the reality. The idea was to photograph the sets after filming, so that there would be a sense of implied narrative, but that the story would not be too overt. We do like the idea of making the viewers use their imaginations to invent these scenarios!

The scale and level of detail is extraordinary, and not many films get made this way any longer, mostly relying on CGI instead. In the Secret Room image, from the dust under the sink to the cobwebs on the light, the detail is incredible. And they actually built Westminster Bridge in a studio – on the legendary 007 Soundstage, to be precise. It was just so incredible.

It’s quite amazing to think that even as these vast structures are being built, they are already scheduled for demolition and recycling. The sets are so atmospheric that in a sense we were taking portraits of them, trying to show their character.

We were on standby for nearly six months and would receive emails saying things like ’Be at Pinewood Studios tomorrow at 10am and go to Studio M.’ We had no idea what we would see, nor what the plot of the film was, nor the lighting that was used in the film. We reacted instantly to what we found on each visit, and we then had to make very fast decisions and had to create images before each set was demolished. We referenced art history a huge amount in this project, because we saw so many analogies between the sets versus numerous paintings and art movements from previous centuries. Everything from the constructivism, vorticism and brutalism through to trompe l’oiel ceilings, Pieter de Hooch and Rembrandt.”

 “Perhaps we end up challenging peoples’ expectations of what a photograph actually is, and what it is ’supposed to do’.

OBERSHAUSER’S CONTROL ROOM, MORROCCO (OPEN CORRIDOR)

The Manga Dreams series is a photography series meticulously organised and multifaceted. From pressing the shutter button to printing the pictures, what modifications did the photographs go through for you to feel happy with them?

”It’s interesting that you ask this: in fact, people often ask this about photographs whereas they would never ask this about a painting, no matter how stylised it is! Everyone makes so many assumptions and preconceived notions about that word ’photograph’. No other visual art form carries so much baggage around! But everyone wants to know this about a photograph — whether it is ’natural’ or ’Photoshopped’. Although it is not our main intention, nevertheless it seems a lot of our projects challenge this idea of ’photography’. And actually, provided you are creating good art, nothing else matters.
Initially we were going to put Manga-style backgrounds on all the images, but we ended up taking many of them out again. The reason was that the ambiguity of the plain portraits against the studio background was so powerful, and felt like being half way between a Manga world and our own.

As we went through the process of finalising the images for printing, we had a very strange feeling: we had thought that we were photographing humans trying to become Manga characters, but finally it felt like we might have been photographing Manga characters trying to become human. And that makes sense, after all, because if humans are so desirous of becoming fictional, then perhaps fictional characters can also dream of becoming human… Maybe they all share the same desire as Pinocchio.”

”Everyone makes so many assumptions and preconceived notions about the word ’photograph’. No other visual art form carries so much baggage around!”

What would be the ideal event, setting, person, or phenomena to photograph to fully satisfy your creative desire? Is it perhaps something you’ve discussed or would you prefer it to come spontaneously?

”Our projects are very wide-ranging, simply because we don’t believe in limiting ourselves to one area of study or topic. Once we decide on a project, we then have to find the correct stylistic interpretation to maximise and emphasise the expression of the things we feel are important. The visual language is key.

Honestly, there are still so many things that we can explore, and we are working on a number of new ideas right now. It will take a while for them to surface, perhaps – we never rush things.

An ’ideal event’ is simply something that grabs our attention, something that amazes us, something that makes us think about things differently. And, we are pleased to say, that can be absolutely anything at all. There is a whole world of stimuli, and endless created ideas as well. No limits!”

OBERSHAUSER’S CONTROL ROOM, MORROCCO (OPEN CORRIDOR)