Interview with Barry Marsden

29 October 1998

This interview took place in the Gallery's frame store the day before the 'Art of Cooking' was hung. It was the first time Barry Marsden had seen any of the portraits printed and framed. Terence Pepper, the Gallery's Curator of Photographs, joined Susan Bright and Barry Marsden to talk about the photographs and discuss the commission.

SUSAN BRIGHT: So Barry, until now you have only seen the contact prints and transparencies. Now that you have seen them printed-up for the exhibition, are there any surprises?

BARRY MARSDEN: They're all a surprise! I'm used to seeing my work reproduced in magazines where the images can be small or sometimes smaller than the original. To see them on this scale is almost overwhelming. It's wonderful.

SB: Of the 30 portraits commissioned, you have completed 21 - how do you feel the commission is going?

BM: I feel a lot easier about it now than I did after the first few weeks. Then it felt like I'd been doing it for such a long time. I felt like I must have had loads of them done but when I added them up I'd only done eight. I realised then that I'd have to develop a bit more stamina. I'm more into a rhythm with it now. Its much easier to cope with now than it was in the beginning.

SB: You mentioned last time that your were looking forward to photographing Rick Stein. How did that go?

BM: Wonderfully well. He's entered the top four of superstars that I've photographed! He was very, very generous with his time and quite bold in that he went outside where he was constantly mobbed by people wanting his autograph. I didn't realise that he was quite so famous. He wasn't put off by that. He was wonderful. He took to the ideas very well and he didn't question for one minute what I was trying to do. He showed an interest in the direction it was going and just let me do it the way I saw it. Which was great.

SB: Can you talk a little about the different approaches you used with him?

BM: I'd been to Padstow the day before to do a reccy and decided that we would work on the half-tide slip. Padstow's a very bustling port; full of tourists the whole time and that seemed to be an area where we could get away from the public at least for a little bit. We were able to keep people out of the picture, although we did attract a little gathering of viewers by the end of the session. So the first set of photographs we did used that area of the harbour. We used the hard Cornish stone-built walls of the harbour, rusting bits of metal that were lying around and an absolutely massive sea bass which would probably have cost his punters a fortune in the restaurant. We progressed nicely there. I also did a set of pictures based on him being a magician with fish. I strung up a mackerel and with the pose and lighting we seemed to suggest that it was standing bolt upright on its tail in his hand. I tried to push his expression towards a very intense Merlin-like quality.

SB: The NPG eventually chose a photograph of him sitting in the harbour. Can you talk a little about that picture?

BM: We'd attracted a few members of the public by then so we co-opted one person to throw bread to attract the seagulls, which is a very bad thing to do in a harbour, people don't like you to do it. The harbour Master was around anyway and he seemed to think that it was OK. All the elements are as I've just described. The day wasn't as it appears in the shot - it was much brighter - not nearly as intense and looking as though the world is about to end. That effect was done with my lighting and under-exposing the background. He's just surrounded by all the things that say harbour. It's got anchors, a vent that is rusting, the Cornish stone walls. He's in his whites with a little spot of blood on his apron from the fish, which grew and grew throughout the shoot. He also managed to get blessed from on high by one of the seagulls but that didn't seem to bother him either.

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SB: Which is your favourite image from that shoot?

BM: I can't really say. Although from the contacts and the transparencies that I have viewed I think that perhaps the fish magician ones. I'd like to see a really good print of that.

SB: We have printed one from that shoot actually. What do you think?

BM: I love it, but the one I would have been talking about earlier would be when the fish is actually floating, the one when he's got the fish in his hand. This idea relates directly to a piece he did in his TV series where he did a little tour around Padstow in the early hours of the morning. This seems to be the only time when it is quiet. There's a local photographer who is very different from any other local photographers that I have seen and he had a lovely black and white picture in his window. It was a shot that Rick Stein liked very much of a circus performer juggling three mackerel. It inspired me to go down that route - not to do the juggling - but to think of some surreal way of using a fish. The final images relate directly to something that he was aware of and I think that's why he liked them. I'm waiting to see one of these prints with the fish in his hand standing up right as if he's hypnotised it into standing there.

SB: Which brings me on to my next question about commissioner's choice and your choice. In the last interview we discussed a specific photograph of Antonio Carluccio. The NPG then selected a different one. How do you feel about that?

BM: That's something that I've got used to throughout my working life as a photographer. Hardly ever does a magazine, I work almost exclusively for magazines, pick the one that I would have chosen, and it's difficult to say why. They obviously know their market and their audience and I would be picking from personal preference, sometimes misguided by the effort it might have taken to produce a particular image rather than another. I've just got used to it and I accept it as part of being a photographer. It's absolutely a part of my world and there is nothing I can do about it. So long as I produce something that the commissioner is happy with then that's fine, job done.

SB: Can I just bring in Terence Pepper, the curator of photographs, and ask him why he chose some of the pictures that maybe Barry wouldn't.

TERENCE PEPPER: Let's start off with the Carluccio. There was a picture of him holding a very large mushroom, but I felt it had too much to do with the current discussion of the millennium dome. People might laugh at it and make jokes about it whereas the picture we've chosen shows his fingers in a very sculptural way with several mushrooms, which I think makes a far better picture. With the Richard Corrigan, my first choice was in fact to go for the Rococo background, sitting on the fireplace surround with his shoes kicked onto the floor. It was a wonderful colour picture. But the more I looked at Corrigan's face I felt that the background was overwhelming him. I wanted to go for, like the Carluccio, a portrait of the person. I felt the black and white shot of Corrigan was more considered and less of a stunt-type picture. The colour picture would be great in a magazine like the Mail on Sunday or something but I thought that for the Portrait Gallery we wanted something longer lasting, less immediately fashionable. So I was thinking of the long-term on that one. I don't know if Barry agrees or not.

BM: I entirely agree. The word 'stunt' probably does describe the other shot of Corrigan rather well because it's a completely unnatural place to be sitting. The selected portrait of Corrigan is probably quieter and maybe a slow burner but will last longer for it.

The Carluccio one is probably a good example of what I was saying about the client making one choice and the photographer making another, because I probably would have gone for the one with him holding the huge mushroom because I was so overwhelmed by the size of it. So, there's a classic example of becoming fixed on a photograph for perhaps not the right reasons. So I agree with Terence about the choices that were made, they are probably more subtle.

SB: And how do you like the selected Antonio Carluccio portrait now that its been printed up?

BM: I love it. It certainly has the drama and grittiness that I was trying to get into the shot. His assistant will be thrilled with that shot because he put together the little still life of mushrooms that Antonio Carluccio is holding. They other shots I did were very different in atmosphere and perhaps a bit more spectacular. Perhaps this is much more introspective and decorative than some of the others might have been.

SB: And the Corrigan?

BM: I'm happy with the choice that's been made. It has a feel of the Irishness of the restaurant with the verse in the background. I like his expression there. His son had just walked into the room and I can really relate to that half-smile on his face. You know he went very dreamy and smiley when his little boy had walked into the room. I can relate to that too.

SB: The commission has had plenty of press coverage so far. That must be exciting.

BM: It is very, very exciting. I just can't believe that it's anything to do with me. That feeling of seeing the picture of Madhur Jaffrey on the front of the Telegraph for instance. I've had pictures on the front of the Telegraph before, but those were commissioned by the Telegraph and this one was a news item about my pictures! It was just extraordinarily different. Its very difficult for me to perhaps explain how its different but you can imagine. It's not just a picture that you have taken for them to fill a spot that they had. It's them talking about a picture that they had no need to use if they didn't want to. It was just extraordinarily exciting.

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SB: Let's talk a little about some of the pictures. The portrait of Joyce Molyneux of the Carved Angel didn't catch my eye when I saw the transparency. Now that its been printed for the exhibition it is very dramatic. What do you think about that?

BM: I agree. It was probably one of the most difficult shoots. I would hate Joyce to feel that it had anything to do with her. It didn't. I had little fluffy clouds between my ears for much longer than any of the other shoots and it took me a lot of time to work out, what should have been on the face of it, a very simple shot. It was extremely tricky to light in the way that I wanted to achieve a certain effect. I wanted the light to appear to be coming from the angel itself. When I saw it in transparency I was pleased that it had come out at all, but now seeing it printed up I think it has a lot more drama than I was even aware of at the time. I like the lovely little boat in the background. It gives it a picturesque element. That was important - I didn't want to go to Dartmouth to photograph someone and not show the scenery.

SB: Its clear that drama and intensity play a part in much of your work. Were these effects created on purpose?

BM: That's constant throughout my work. There is a strain of what I think are humorous pictures in my work as well but I'd say that the majority of the work I do is dramatic. It's certainly not about presenting people in a beautiful or flattering way, I wouldn't even begin to know how to go about that, so I suppose that that's an element of my personality coming through. I tend to be drawn to darker images rather than more beautiful ones. I think that that does come across in the way that I've lit work. I don't think that's a bad thing.

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SB: Which of the portraits strike you immediately as somehow different or unexpected from how you imagined them at the time of shooting?

BM: One of them, the Ken Hom actually. I think I only took about three frames of him that close up. Obviously as a device I was trying to get his embroided chefs top in. His face strikes me as being quite powerful. Its perhaps not necessarily how he would see himself and it's certainly because of the photo shoot that we were able to get to that because he's a very cheery man who is laughing all the time. I think that's quite a powerful portrait.

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SB: Completely different from the Ken Hom portrait are the environment shots of Sir Terence Conran and Stephen Bull. How do you think they work?

BM: Well I didn't go into these shots thinking I was going to get some modern interiors. It just worked out that way. I think that they fit in very nicely considering what we have just said about intensity. They are a bit lighter in feel and the little joke about the person walking over the top of Stephen Bull's head I think works. I think its good that we've been able to get a bit more of modern super clean feel into some of the pictures.

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SB: You have used humour as a device in the Roux Brothers shot.

BM: Yes. I think they base their whole media output on a kind of battle between the two of them. They do joke quite a lot. Certainly when we were photographing them they were joshing with one another a great deal. I don't know if they would like the picture at all. I don't think it was too much to have a joke - perhaps a little at their expense.

SB: Seeing the pictures all together do you think they work as a collection?

BM: I think they do. There's nothing that immediately jars. There's nothing that looks out of place and I would hope that there is nothing that looks weak. That would have been my biggest fear - doing something that didn't come up to the mark. The way I work it always feels like I'm starting again each time. There's always that moment of panic at the beginning wondering if you're going to be able to come up with an idea or find a place to do something or make anything work at all.

SB: Terence, What did you have in mind when you were selecting for the collection?

TP: Well we obviously had discussions with Barry about the commission and the kind of work I was looking for. From the outset we both agreed that we didn't want the kind of pictures that we see every week in the news papers. We didn't want images of a cook in the kitchen with bits of food being chopped up. Those are ideal for editorial and general articles. We wanted something with a longer resonance. We wanted to concentrate on the person as a person rather than actually in the act of cooking or food preparation. These pictures are to celebrate the opening of the café in the basement but also they are to be associated with the project in 2000 for our roof top restaurant so they have to have a long life. I asked Barry to treat everything in a different way and if possible give us a choice of three or four set-ups. He has spoilt us by doing so in every case. Several things were very hard to choose between - particularly the Terence Conran.

He did a wonderful set-up with lots of plates and also photographed him in Mezzo with some of the waiters and kitchen staff. I'm very pleased to see in the background that there are some pumpkins, which locates it firmly to Halloween. The Mezzo picture is a very good example of seeing more and more in the picture every time you look. I'm absolutely thrilled. What's so good about this commission is that every portrait is done in a different way and I think that's what makes a very interesting exhibition. I think people will come to see it again and again. It was an ideal commission.

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SB: There seems to be a good balance between black and white and colour. Then of course there is the Simon Hopkinson portrait which is cross-processed.

BM: We Simon did at his flat. That wasn't a problem. He had a wonderful place for me to photograph in. We came up with lots and lots of different ideas. He was very good in front of the camera. I noticed this incredible red gloss landing which seemed completely over the top and almost like a Soho restaurant. He had been talking about the Colony Room and so we decided to do a shot of him there. Because of the film I was using and the colouring of the lighting I decided to cross process the film to help the colours along the way and increase the contrast. I think it added a little bit of atmosphere to the shot. He looks very grand doesn't he standing there in his shorts and no shoes.

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SB: In contrast to that is the Sally Clarke portrait which I find a very quiet picture. How did that shoot go?

BM: The shoot went very well and we only really spotted this as a potential set up after we had done a couple of other ideas. I think it does give a strong impression of her. I wouldn't like to put into words what that impression is as I might be completely, wrong. But I think it gives her a look of quiet strength working away in the background there surrounded by the raw materials. You wonder what magic she can weave with those.

TP: Can I ask you about photographic influences? The selected portrait of Fay Maschler reminds me a lot of Bill Brandt's work. Do you admire Bill Brandt and is there anything of him in the portrait?

BM: There are a lot of photographers from recent years that I admire and Bill Brandt is certainly one of them. I make no bones about trying to get that feel across the Fay Maschler. portrait.

TP: Are you influenced by other photographic images when you're working?

BM: Rarely. I think sometimes I have such a very limited knowledge of photographic history. Its true I studied painting so I would be able to recall many more painted images than photographic images. There are many photographers who I hear mentioned in conversation about photography that I've never heard of and they are obviously seminal figures.

TP: The Sally Clarke portrait has the feel of a Dutch still-life.

BM: Is that right? I guess so. It must seep through - all those years of art training. Although it must seep through almost by accident because the idea that you take the feel of a Dutch still-life means that you probably had some inkling as to how to recreate it and I didn't. I think the images succeed almost by accident in some cases.

TP: Did you actually arrange the bananas and oranges to make this nice shape or was it a completely found picture? Were you like Roger Fenton rearranging the cannon balls after the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War to make a better picture?

BM: The fruit and vegetables were there but we rearranged it all. We did actually take things out so that they were not cluttered behind her. It was all more or less there but stacked up in a different way so you couldn't actually see it from the view point that I took in the end.

SB: You couldn't rearrange the Franco Taruschio portrait. Did you do interior shots as well?

BM: I sort of stuck to the outside and in the teeth of an absolute gale as well. I actually had to turn a garden table on its side and tie my lights to it so that they didn't get blown away. But I figured why go all the way to Wales to a restaurant that's out in the country and then photograph him in a kitchen, which could be in any restaurant anywhere. I strongly felt that we had to get some kind of idea of the isolation of the place and that it was out in the country and not in London, so I was determined that we went outside.

SB: The Madhur Jaffrey portrait is very different, it is a beautifully opulent picture.

BM: Yes, I don't know how she managed to co-ordinate her sari with the colours of the background I'd chosen. She hadn't even looked into the room and I hadn't spoken to her about what I was intending to do. It was a fantastic coincidence. That's actually in the restaurant at the Ritz. I I've photographed several people in there before so I knew it as a location and I had a couple of ideas of what I wanted to do worked out before I had even gone along. I didn't stray too much from what I had intended. I mean it is such an extraordinarily opulent background

SB: Just as a kind of daft question! If you were allowed one photograph on your desert island as it were, which one would it be?

BM: Can I only choose from the ones that have been printed?

SB: OK. You can have one that has been selected for the exhibition and one other.

BM: Right. The one of my own choice would be a close toss up between a tight headshot I did of Nico Landenis and one of the black and white magician shots of Rick Stein. That would be very, very difficult to choose between the two of them, although they are very different pictures. I would probably go with the Rick Stein one because he was so wonderful and I like what he does and I like fish.

Out of the exhibition prints, I think, bizarrely, that I would go for the Sally Clarke one. It is more than slightly different to my normal approach and was a very happy accident. I had already done two shots, which were much more in keeping with how I go generally about a job. I'm very pleased with how that looks and maybe I should take a signal from that and try and edge towards that in the future as a slightly newer way of working.

SB: Terence, if you had to take one which one would you take and why?

TP: Well I very much like the Sally Clarke picture as well, and it would be a toss up between that and the Terence Conran maybe. The Terence Conran works for me on lots of different levels. It's a wonderful architectural picture. I love the mirror image of him and love the colours I also like the staff in the background and all the little details. It just works as a portrait. How about you?

SB: I think I would go for the Alastair Little. It's one of the few pictures where he looks like a chef who works really hard.

BM: You do know that's done at his house! The idea that we wanted to put across was, hey, you've just done one of your fifteen-hour days. We actually made him put his head under the tap too. He was drenched. That doesn't actually come across in the picture but I think that added to his mood which then made the picture work.

SB: What other ones did you contrive like that?

BM: I think there are very few like the Nico Landenis one and in some respects the Conran one. I would say that about half of them were complete fictions and the other half were finding a nice place and lighting it interestingly within the confines of what we actually had.

SB: What have you learnt from doing this commission?

BM: As far as the commission goes I've learnt that I can do it. I honestly thought I didn't think I could in terms of stamina and maintaining a level. I'm more used to doing a job, finishing it and then doing another one. It kind of allows you a short period of rest in between. This was the long haul and I haven't finished yet of course! People who work in this way constantly must have tremendous photographic stamina.

SB: Finally, who is your next shot?

BM: Sophie Grigson next week. November 6th and then everyone else has to be fitted in. I think a couple of the ones that are outstanding are proving difficult to arrange for whatever reason. But I will get them in the end!

SB: We're looking forward to seeing the rest. We had better leave you to get on with it and get these ones up on the walls.

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