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\t\t\tThe suits, formal pose and Parker pens identify this pair as Gilbert & George<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n
It was a bright day and although the wall was in shade, the light was reflecting onto a white wall behind me and bouncing onto Gilbert & George. It\u2019s often better to photograph people in the shadows as you don\u2019t have to deal with areas of light and shade in the image, and people are not being dazzled by direct sunlight and squinting into the lens. As a result, the pictures end up being more intimate, as you have more of a connection with the subject.<\/p>\n
After shooting the close-ups, I decided to step back and include more of the scene around them. The foreground was quite messy; there were traffic cones and barriers, litter including a discarded parking ticket and a skip. George put his hat on one of the cones. Although it was untidy, it seemed appropriate. It was representative of the area in which they lived, and it also echoed the kind of clutter and everyday detritus they show in their artworks.<\/p>\n
I also liked the idea that this is a strange, slightly surreal scene that you might come across while walking around London. You\u2019d turn a corner and there would be Gilbert & George standing stiffly in their suits and staring at you.<\/p>\n
They were happy to play ball with my ideas, either because I seemed sincere, or because they regarded the whole process of shooting a portrait for a magazine feature as being a playful piece of nonsense. Either way, they did exactly what I asked. Like most people, they preferred to be directed towards something specific the photographer wants, rather than having the aesthetic decisions deferred to them.<\/p>\n
The second time I photographed them was for GQ Style magazine, a few years later. The picture I most like from that shoot shows them with their heads cropped out of the picture, lit with a ringflash [above]. It might seem unusual for a portrait to exclude people\u2019s faces, but to me it seemed the obvious thing to do.<\/p>\n
They are instantly recognisable but not for their faces; they\u2019re known because they always stand in the same formal way, they wear the same suits and smart ties, and they have Parker pens in their top pockets. It\u2019s partly about them being \u2018living sculptures\u2019, but I think it\u2019s more about branding.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re aware that they are projecting a brand and they\u2019re in on the joke, but the fa\u00e7ade never really crumbles and they don\u2019t acknowledge it. So I thought I\u2019d take that idea to its logical conclusion and just photograph the brand, because all the time I\u2019d photographed them, I didn\u2019t feel I\u2019d found out anything about them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Award-winning portrait photographer Harry Borden recalls two portrait sessions with the eccentric and enigmatic contemporary artists Gilbert & George.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1436,"featured_media":75177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[],"product-category":[],"class_list":["post-75173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photo_insight"],"yoast_head":"\n