Rankin is Turning the Contemporary into the Iconic. Always in step with the prevailing cultural zeitgeist, Rankin is an acclaimed photographer whose commercial images create disruptive campaigns for top global brands and whose unmistakable personal work regularly ascends to iconic status. WORDS: NICK RICE

“I realised quickly that I was really good at making people feel comfortable when I was taking their photograph,” says the world-respected British photographer John Rankin Waddell, known mononymously as Rankin, reflecting on the early days of his journey with photography. He adds, “People are embarrassed in photographs and they feel uncomfortable, so if you’re not fuelling that, you’re displacing it… bursting the bubble.”

The ever-growing list of people that Rankin has made feel at ease over his 30-plus year stellar career, is quite remarkable. There is royalty, both monarchical and rock, with the likes of Queen Elizabeth, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Madonna, David Bowie and so many more opening up for him. They sit alongside world leaders and superstars of the worlds of music, film, sport, fashion and the art world. Alongside his enormous collection of A-list celebrity portraits, he’s also created memorable bodies of work for philanthropic causes, charities, and institutions such as the National Health Service in the UK.

Björk, 1994

David Bowie, 1995

“I realised quickly that I was really good at making people feel comfortable when I was taking their photograph”

Rankin’s work has been commissioned by the world’s biggest global brands for international campaigns, and graced the covers of countless high-end magazines, and he somehow manages to not only be a celebrated photographer and filmmaker, but an entrepreneur who runs his own publishing company, advertising agency, photography studio and management business representing directors and photographers.

He studied the history of art and semiotics in college and attended University of the Arts London, after thankfully swerving a much less extraordinary option. As a young man beginning higher education, Rankin was enrolled to become an accountant. After living alongside art students in his first year, he wisely questioned what he was doing and quit accountancy – number crunching’s loss was photography and contemporary culture’s gain.

Rankin and Robyn at the production of the colour-splattered video Cobrastyle.

In 1991, alongside college friend Jefferson Hack, Rankin co-founded the seminal youth culture magazine Dazed & Confused, which takes its title from a song by legendary rockers Led Zeppelin and captures how the founders were feeling at the time, as the UK was deep into a recession. There was no work out there for the art school graduates… and so they had to create their own platform.

Dazed & Confused had its 30th anniversary last year and Rankin pored over his staggering catalogue of era-defining images to compose a series of retrospectives. 2021 was also the tenth anniversary of Rankin’s biannual fashion, culture and lifestyle magazine, Hunger, which he titled in reference to how he still feels about creating impactful images and art.

Rankin is still hungry and currently publishes four lifestyle and fashion magazines and has issued over 40 books of photographs. And all the while still shooting for top-end brands and appearing as a judge or mentor on television shows. A self-confessed workaholic, he wakes up around 5.30am to walks his dogs, then does emails until 9ish when he goes on set… and it’s very rare that he doesn’t have a shoot booked. Then it’s meetings and more emails until 8 in the evening as there is so much more to manage besides the world class photography.

Rankin also finds time to engage on social media, appearing on YouTube and doing Insta-Lives, where he is redoubtably down to earth, approachable, modest and eager to help successive generations of photographers thrive in the art form.

“A great photograph does two things: It makes you think something and it makes you feel something,” Rankin says, and recalls that when he
picked up a camera aged 21, he had a lightbulb moment – he knew photography was it for him.

He gravitated to portraiture early and says, “Photographs are moments in time, and they have the ability to capture an essence of somebody, or an essence of a moment, and the great portrait photographers are the people that create those moments because they allow someone to do something or be somebody that reveals something about them.”

“A great photograph does two things: It makes you think something and it makes you feel something”

Rankin is a natural communicator and his urge to inspire and guide successive generations of photographers is laudable. His sage advice is to, “Follow your gut, your imagination, and your intellect equally. If you’re trying imaginatively to copy someone else, or emotionally you’re not trusting yourself, or intellectually you’re not thinking about it, then you’re immediately impeding your potential to succeed. All of the work that I’ve become well known and successful for, is not the commercial work that earns me money, it’s the work that I’ve done personally.”

Aside from his highly-paid commissions, Rankin still enjoys a flourishing career filled with passion projects. Speaking at the last edition of The Photography Show in London, Rankin said, “I’m still really enjoying using daylight. I’m still enjoying making my own work, that’s got no reason for it apart from that I want to do it. And I want to do some new solo projects, just me and a camera doing personal stuff... without all the chaos of all the people.”

Rankin’s personal work is always deeply and inherently intertwined with the cultural climate, often spotlighting overlooked or subtle nooks of what being human means in the 21st Century. His most recent contribution to the development of the language of photography, is as a mentor on the BBC programme, The Great British Photography Challenge.

On the show, Rankin encourages viewers to talk about photography and to use their phones or cameras to embark upon their own photographic journey, to create an adventure of their own. It’s certainly a journey that has enriched Rankin’s life in so many ways, and one that he will continue until his last breath. “I have a feeling I’ll be taking photographs until the day I die. I know that’s my desire.”