Dean Chalkley

"It’s good that you can’t see how long the ladder is: you should only see the next rung or the one after that, because otherwise you might think it’s far too gruelling and do something else." says Dean Chalkley.

“My mum and dad were farm labourers and I grew up on a farm", says Dean Chalkley. "Then the farm got bought out by a big corporation which closed it, and we moved to Southend-on-Sea. My dad had a Russian Zenit EM SLR, which was built like a tank. I liked playing around with it, but at the time I was more into music, and I wanted to be a fashion designer. 

“I went to Fairfax High School for Boys in Westcliff-on-sea. It was the sort of place that you went if you failed your 11-plus. I’m now 39, so this was about 1980, at the time of the mod revival. I was a hardened mod, totally into scooters, dressing flamboyantly in cravats and so on.

“When I left school, I was accepted into the local college to do an art foundation, but I did a youth training scheme in clothing craft instead - studying to be a tailor, basically. I did that for a year, and then stayed on for another year unpaid, operating as a bespoke trouser maker for my friends, getting experience, because that’s what I thought I was going to do. There came a crunch point where I had to decide: do I borrow lots of money to set up a workshop? I was 18, and I wasn’t so sure. 

“I joined the Civil Service instead, and remained there for about seven years. Throughout my time there, I thought it was really good. They sent me on a day release A level photography course in Southend. That coincided with my doing a bit of motor racing, so I’d go and take photographs at Brand’s Hatch. I did an evening class as well, and my passion for photography just grew and grew. 

“The first camera I bought was a Nikon F401 – an early autofocus SLR - but then I bought a Yashica medium format twin lens reflex, which I loved. One of the guys at the place where I worked would set me weekly projects, like ‘Show me 10 pictures that tell me everything about your road’. They were simple briefs, but they unlocked an imagination that I didn’t know was there, while the A level encouraged me to look into technical and historical aspects of photography. 

“As I approached the end of the course, the lecturer said, ‘You should do a degree. It’d be a total waste if you didn’t’. Up to that point, I’d never even thought about doing a degree. The school I went to, we didn’t do A Levels: we did CSEs. Only if you were put forward for them could you do an O level. But I went and saw a few universities. Blackpool was my favourite, so I applied there.

"They conducted  interviews in which you saw four lecturers one after the other. And then you'd be marked by a group of current students  - you'd would wait in a room with a group of students, and unbeknown to you, the students had been asked to rate you on things like personality and the possibility of cohesion to the group. Although the percentage weighting given to this part of the process  was small, it highlighted the importance they gave to getting the right people on the course.

"Some students on the course came straight from school and college, but many had all manner of previous experiences. The factor that united us was a passion for photography. They did like you to have a bit of life experience rather than being straight out of college - though there were people like that in my year as well, like Dan Holdsworth. 

“The course was two years in duration and advertising orientated, very focused on practicality and how to get on in business, at the same time developing the artistic and theoretical sides, encouraging research and instilling a viewpoint. 

"Students who had left the previous year, like Jonathan Kitchen, would come back and give us advice. Simon Stock had stayed on for an extra year, because that year was the first that the course had achieved degree status.

“I bought a second hand Mamiya RB67 at Jessops in Blackpool, and it served me well. I used it through my course and for many years afterwards. Even though it was heavy, I liked to use it handheld with a prism finder. It had a good centre of gravity, and I liked the feeling of fluidity I got with it.

“We were in Blackpool out of season. It was very bleak: windy, rainy and hard. There weren’t loads of nights getting drunk at the bar; it was much more gruelling, eating raw pizzas just to get the work done! Just before I graduated, my work was picked for the biennial Naarden photo festival in the Netherlands, which was a really nice way of finishing the course.

“Then Richard Maxted, Jonathan Kitchen, my girlfriend Amanda, her friend Anna and myself, all moved into a house in Golders Green, London. I signed on for supplementary benefit when I arrived, but they tried to push me into things like working in supermarkets, so I signed off at Christmas and lived hand to mouth. “You become comfortable at college. You know that the equipment store and the studio are there, you can get the film processed. But as soon as you move out of that environment, the simplest things become the hardest. To go and take a portrait of somebody becomes really difficult – you might have a camera, but you’ve got no support system. 

“Being with a group of photographers helped. We’d go and see people together. Our portfolios were lovingly crafted. Richard’s was made of wood and velvet lined, and contained 10x8 transparencies - he’d invested loads of money and time in it. We went to see a guy who owned a magazine. He opened the portfolio then went to make a cup of tea, and his cat jumped right into the box on top of the transparencies. Richard nearly had an embolism!

“I approached Dazed and Confused. It was very small at the time - one office. Rankin did most of the photography. They offered me a job pretty much on the spot, to photograph the artist Helen Chadwick; and I did bits and pieces for The Independent. Then I made the acquaintance of a guy named Yogi, who became my agent for several years. He was straight up advertising, that’s what he knew and loved. He’d been an art buyer for Abbott Mead Vickers when they had their dream team back in the 1970s. 

“I started to assist Malcolm Venville and other photographers, at the same time seeing ad agencies and putting the book around. Then I became full time assistant to Seamus Ryan. I was with him for about nine months before I got my big break, which was a campaign for Twix, around the theme ‘Take a Break from the Norm’. There were five ads in the campaign, in which a character called Norm, who had a bobble hat, big ears and goofy teeth, would appear with say a courting couple. We did shots in nightclubs, with loads of extras. 

“The budget for that campaign was about £30,000, which was a lot of money at the time. I took on an accountant quite early, going with one that had been recommended by another photographer. Then I went for voluntary VAT registration. When it came to the time of the VAT return I felt I needed a bit of guidance, but the company I was with said I was fine. Luckily, I got a second opinion from Hutchings and Co, another accountant, which told me I had to do this, this and this; and from that day on, they’ve been my accountant. 

“I never found editorial photography in the UK to be a particularly good route into advertising. Ad buyers would look at editorial, and then say to an advertising photographer, ‘This is what we want, like this!’ Whereas, in New York, they would see stuff in the magazines, think it was great, and get the guy in. Yogi didn’t like me doing editorial stuff anyhow, because he wanted my time, so apart from Mixmag, I stopped all editorial work, and we did lots of advertising, for clients like Ben Sherman and Lloyds.

“It was at about this point that I started to become unsure that the work we were getting was what I wanted to do, and this feeling of dissatisfaction grew and grew. The reason you’re doing it is because you love it, and the bottom line is that money isn’t a motivator - I’d just spend it when I had it anyway. 

“One of the things I spent money on was making a short film. I didn’t know it was going to be a film when I started out. I thought it was going to be a photographic project on drag racing, and then I naïvely thought, ‘Why don’t I make a film?’ I made it on super-8 format, shooting about nine hours of footage – so film and processing alone cost about £12,000. I learned a lot doing it, and it helped to clarify my thoughts.

I had a conversation with Yogi, and we realised we had different goals; his were more commercial, whereas I was concerned to produce a body of work that I could be proud of forever, so we went our separate ways. This was about six years ago, and then for a year I had no agent at all. 

“Financially, I didn’t do very well without an agent because, when it comes down to it, I’m rubbish at money. I just do something because I love doing it. Then I met Adele Rider, who owns and runs Shoot Group, and I’ve been with them ever since. You need somebody to take you in hand, to negotiate for you and to protect you, and also to look after your time. I’m much happier with my direction now, because they want me to do what I want to do, which is refreshing.

“I’ve been shooting for NME (New Musical Express) since 2001. Marian Paterson, its picture editor, had just joined, and was looking to introduce new people into the mix. I met her when she was at Sky. She’s got a good manner about her, and knows how to encourage people. Richard Ashcroft, lead singer of The Verve, was the first person I photographed for NME, and ironically last week I was on tour with The Verve, who’ve just reformed. 

“When I was growing up, there were great photographers in the NME, like Kevin Westenberg – he’s an absolute genius – and Anton Corbijn - classic stuff. Anton Corbijn recently directed Control, the film about Ian Curtis and Joy Division, and I went and saw him give a talk at the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead. He was talking about his famous pictures of Ian Curtis. People assume that they hung out forever, but it was quite a fleeting moment. He only met Ian for 10 minutes, and he didn’t really speak good English, but that was somehow part of the dynamic of getting the picture. 

“It’s a pleasure photographing people. I photographed Rhys Ifans for The Observer, which I like taking photos for, because they say, ‘We want this person photographed, so let’s get this person to photograph them how they do’, rather than going ‘Exactly like this’. I shot the Bond girl, Eva Green, and that was the same sort of thing, like ‘We’ve got this idea, but do it your own way’. That is the perfect situation, because you understand that a publication, be it a magazine, online or an advert, has to fulfil a mechanical or technical aspect in order to function, so you have to deliver a certain thing, but then it’s up to you to use your brain and work yourself into the mix. That’s how it should work, and all those years ago in advertising, that’s why I started to go off the boil: it was so specific, you couldn’t make any suggestions or have any input. 

“Strangely, I’m now doing advertising again, but the stuff that’s coming through is really good, and fun. I’ve shot for Levi’s, and I did a Keep Britain Tidy campaign for Encams, the environmental charity. The essence of the campaign is that people are turned into pigs, so we shot these characters with pig noses and tails on them. It was good fun, and edgy for an ad. 

“I’ve been shooting for Italian fashion magazines like Sport, and Street – which goes to fashion buyers and all the top people in fashion. It’s almost like a bible for the season after next. 

“My agent gets me work, and I go out looking for work myself. I go and see a lot of bands. If I really love their stuff, I’ll make their acquaintance, or record companies phone up the agent to call in the book. Or a band member might see my pictures when they’re surfing the net, and ask their record company to call me in. 

“I moved from the Mamiya to the 645 format autofocus Hasselblad H1 when it first came out about five years ago. The first shoot I did with it was Johnny Vegas in the grounds of St Helens Rugby Club, of which he’s a massive fan. It was great, because you can do studied shots, but you can also be a lot more spontaneous. I was running around the pitch. The camera takes a lot of grief. You can shoot quite rapidly and change things over quickly. 

“Computers were just beginning to come in when I was at school. We had Acorn Atoms. My transition to digital photography was a slow to begin with. I was keeping my eye on developments, but it just wasn’t there. You’d meet photographers who’d hail digital like it like it was the new thing, evangelising about the 4MP camera they’d just sold all their kit for, but the quality was shocking by today’s standards. 

“And then the scales tipped dramatically over a one year period, and I bought a Canon EOS 1DS MkII DSLR three years ago, which was a milestone camera. Film still has its place. One of my recent projects was shot on film. I used a Fuji 645 WA, which is great, because it’s like a snapshot camera, with fast focus, but it’s 645 format so you get amazing quality. And I bought an old Russian Lubitel 6x6 twin lens reflex the other day, for £20 in a junkshop, going for the unique pictorial quality it produces. And I’m trying to buy a Polaroid SX70. Everything’s got it’s place. Nothing’s finished. It’s just changed.

“We like to deliver work to clients via FTP. Some people can cope with certain things and others can’t. If you send through loads of individual files to some people, it blows their mind. They might be in a design agency, but they haven’t got the software, so it becomes very difficult for them to edit. A lot of the time, we put all the work onto a contact sheet, so it’s very easy to cross reference. We keep the files at 300dpi, so they can zoom in and out, and we upload them via yousendit.com, or if they’ve got their own site we’ll put it onto that. 

“I have a full time assistant, Emilie Bailey, and I also have a pool of assistants I can call on depending on the job. For three or four years, I shared a studio in Kentish Town. Then about five years ago, so much of my work was on location that I moved out and created an office at home. But I’ve just gone back to the studio again, because there’s not enough space at home to do what we need to do and to expand. 

“I need more people to work now. There are more demands on us nowadays as photographers. For instance, we have to take on the job of the lab. It’s all right if it’s a one off, but it can be quite difficult when you’re doing four or more jobs a week, when the jobs keep coming in and somebody wants a file immediately from 12 jobs back. If you’re going to continue and be able to retrieve those pictures in 20 years’ time, you need to create systems to control the workflow. 

“Emilie’s been with for me for three years. She studied design, but majored in the photography aspect of it. I first met her at the Roost Studio. She was working there at the time I was looking for somebody. I had six or seven people that I thought were suitable. I had three interviews with every person, and Emily was definitely the choice.  

“The person who’s right for that role isn’t necessarily somebody who wants to be a photographer. I get people who ring me up, saying ‘I just want to come along. I’ll sit at the back of the studio while you’re doing the shoot because I just want to learn.’ Often, it’s people who have just graduated who want an extension of being taught, but that isn’t the way it works. When you’re on a shoot, you don’t have people hanging around. I need people who really want to be part of it for what it is. I always try to inspire, and it’s a team effort. It’s not like I just swan up and press the button. I like to motivate people, and it’s a nice and happy place. That’s how we like it to be. 

“It’s great to find people who are really into it. There’s one guy, Richard, who contacted me when he was at college, and he assists us a lot now, and you can see it sinking in. He understands the situation, and he’s really good. 

“There are other ones that come along, and they take their cameras out on set. Even when I’ve specifically told them not to, they still ask if it’s okay to take some shots, and I tell them, ‘To be honest with you, that’s really bad form’. It’s happened a few times. Then you’re disinclined to have that person back. 

“One time, I was in Sweden, and I turned around and found the assistant holding something up to his eye, and after the shoot I asked, ‘Were you taking pictures then? Just be honest with me’, and he was like, ‘Er … er, yeah I did. But it was just you taking photographs of Chris Martin.’ I was like, ‘That’s not on. You can’t do that. It’s unprofessional’. There’s a blind ambition to get on. They also come along thinking, ‘I’m going to show the client my stuff’. And that’s going to work against them, because if I see it, that’s bad form, and if the client sees it, they’re just going to think this person is overstepping the mark. 

“There are good people out there, who are really keen and not blindly ambitious. If I were looking for an assisting post, I would do anything that was required on a shoot, whether it’s cleaning the cameras or moving the lights. I like to be involved, and I expect everyone else who’s there to be equally into it, and not to be like, ‘Oh right, well I don’t really want to do that’. Keeping the environment tidy is just as important as setting the lights up. We can’t have someone coming in and tripping over. There’s a health and safety issue, and we want it to look tidy. Some people think you’re being a bit weird asking them to put the cups away. The thing is, I’d do it but I’ve this camera in my hand, so they’ve got to do it.” 

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