Jamie Hawkesworth is recognized as one of the greatest living fashion photographers, but his true love—and his introduction to the medium—was documentary photography and portraiture. For the past 13 years he has been traveling the British Isles by train, bus, and ferry to places he’s never been, and has now published a book with over 100 photographs showing just how expansive the region is.
I caught up with Hawkesworth by phone on what was one of the first sunny days of spring in Britain, fitting for the bright imagery in his book The British Isles.
I’m so excited about British Isles. Being that it’s a survey of 13 years that would make it really a survey of your work from when you began making photos. Did you have in your mind that it was going to be a body of work or was it just like a daily practice?
It was most definitely just a daily practice. I really fell in love with photography and I was so desperate to make the most of just walking around taking pictures. That’s kind of how it happened. The first pictures in the book are from 2007, which is when I first swapped courses to photography. I remember I was given a camera and I was trying to kind of work it out and spend time learning to use it, and people were always around. They were always available so I would just leave my flat and ask people to take their portraits because it meant that I could learn to use the camera. The first image in the book is of an Indian boy, if you look closely, there’s these black lines. That’s where I didn’t process the film correctly. I kept that in because it wasn’t only about taking the portraits it was also just learning to print and process film, and the mistakes that I made. It just felt like a perfect way to start the book.
You had come out of a forensic science background, so you came from a place of photography having purely a kind of documentary, factual purpose of scientifically capturing something. Were you still thinking in that very factual sense or did you kind of feel like you were growing into an artistic perspective?
I basically started the forensic science course, it was one day a week where it was very practical, where they had these mock crime scene houses and you would go in and collect evidence. It was a very objective way of taking pictures. It was so simple, with a digital camera and you would put a ruler next to the evidence to give it scale and then you would very objectively document the evidence. So actually, when I switched to photography, it was so different that I kind of immediately forgot about that objective, very simple way of taking pictures. Also, that was on digital, and I was using an analog camera.
Do you feel like the act of approaching people has changed over the 13 years you were making this work?
It’s hard to say, because even right at the beginning, everyone had their idea of how they feel in front of the camera. People have an idea of what a portrait is normally with their friends, or normally is with their parents at home or something like that. So then when I, as a stranger, come up and ask to take someone’s portrait people react in so many different ways. What I learned quite quickly was to just not even question the way that someone would respond and to just embrace types of awkwardness and all types of responses to me. So in that sense, everyone was so different, they all almost felt the same. In that sense, I didn’t notice a change in terms of how technology changed. It was more just that everyone was always really a little bit awkward in having their portraits taken.
It’s interesting that the fact that each one changes, is what makes it kind of a uniform process and that kind of feeling of unknown going into it is what makes it familiar.
Yeah, and I was always really conscious that I should embrace how everybody is because that leaves so much space around the portraits for interpretation. It’s not too much about time. It’s not too much about place. It’s just kind of that individual in all their glory. I think I think when you flick through the book, it’s not like you can really tell when something’s 2007 or when something’s 2020.
I’m really captivated by the timelessness of your portraiture and still lives. Sometimes I feel your landscapes feel a little bit like still lives to me when they’re in a more urban space.
Yeah, they are kind of the landscapes, and kind of still lives at the same time. It’s interesting because actually when you’re out taking people’s portraits and I find someone really amazing I get a real adrenaline rush and it kind of keeps me going. When I was walking around and I hadn’t found someone for half an hour, it was so difficult that I started opening my eyes to all sorts of stuff. Like, there’s a picture of a pram with candy, or some bread, or a puddle. Those types of things were helping me along the journey, because it would sort of recharge my batteries and then I could keep going until I found someone else.
I started to get really excited by the most normal moments. Like a loaf of bread became this extraordinary moment, because there was just, I was so in the flow of just normal life that these kind of very normal things started to take on surreal extraordinary shapes somehow.
In your documentary work a lot of your landscapes are from traveling to places that are new to you. Since these photos are from the place that you call “home” I was curious if you felt like there was more of a personal narrative tied in from a sense of familiarity or was that fleeting experience still very real?
Yeah, it’s a good question, to be honest, in this particular project the fleeting felt even more impactful to me because I was in my own country, so to speak. I had such little idea of what my own country looked like when I first started the project. I would show up at a train station and look on the board and find a place that I kind of like the sound of, like Hartlepool or something, and I just pick and go on a whim. I had no idea what these places looked like when I’d arrive and it was so close to home. The fact that I didn’t know what they looked like and I didn’t know the people that were there I remember feeling unbelievably excited and surprised. Much more surprising than, say, for example, going to Japan or going even to New York or wherever in the world. I somehow built a picture of what I thought these places were. I do think that being in your own home and not realizing what’s on your doorstep, it becomes incredibly exciting.
I really got fire in my belly to try and get to as many places as I could because I just had no idea what they were going to be. I was actually thinking about being in school studying geography or history, and at the time I had no interest at all in history or geography or Hartlepool looked like or what the Shetland Island looked like but when I started photography, I guess it’s sort of an exercise in curiosity more than anything, and I then just started the journey.
You were saying the portraits are really the “meat” of this project. Do you think a lot of that curiosity was about the people you were seeing or was it something larger than that?
Definitely, people are always there so as soon as I left the train station, I’d be surrounded by people. It’s amazing, when you take a portrait of someone you are walking down the road and towards them, and then walk to the next person, and then suddenly you’ve walked the whole town! People just kind of brought you along the way. It’s the idea of just being curious enough to keep walking. One person leads to the next, to the next, to the next. Then suddenly, after two days of walking I’ve got 20 rolls of what life’s like in Hartlepool without even really realizing.
The more and more I think about this book, if I would have sat down in my kitchen 10 years ago and gone “right, I’m gonna do a book about the British Isles and I’m going to show what it’s like to live here and I’m going to show the diversity,” I would have never left the kitchen. It would have just been too overwhelming, I questioned everything. I think the more questions you ask about the project, the harder it gets. Ultimately just really wanting to take photographs and enjoying something I’ve found I love to do, was kind of at the heart of the project really. It just ended up that I’ve got this body of work of the British Isles. Not by mistake, but I never set out to do this type of book it kind of just happened.
One of my favorite portraits is the one of the blond young girl in the blue suit. In part she looks like a middle aged woman on her way to work, but she’s this young girl dressed up and really performing a character. That photo to me carries such a sense of joy and play.
Right when I moved to London, I started working with the stylist, Benjamin Bruno, and we were taking the clothes around with us to places like New Castle and stuff. And we were dressing people as we came across them. The kid in the blue jacket was actually wearing a flowery dress before. She was so excited, she just put this blue suit on and then in front of our eyes, completely transformed and, like you said, basically played dress up. I really questioned whether I should put that in the book. But, actually, I think it kind of gets to the heart of just that sense of play. Suddenly you’re doing one thing and then something just comes along and is the most surreal, strangest thing.
Do you feel more drawn to young people because of their openness or willingness to perform? I love the portrait of the two schoolgirls near the water in this book, too.
They just naturally give a lot. They’re so in the moment they’re so of the now. They’re just so timeless! When you look at a picture of a teenager they’re so of the moment that you can help but relate to it and ask questions about it. With kids, I quickly learned that if I’m just observant and I just let them see their awkward self or whatever, then that honesty will just sort of come across in such a powerful way.
The warmth and your colors always make your photos so inviting. I know you shoot analog and you hand print yourself. Do you do that to have control through the whole process of it, from the moment you’re taking the photo all the way through?
That’s exactly what it is. Someone’s interpretation of color is such a subjective personal thing. If you give it to somebody else, they have their idea, and they might think that all the images are too warm.
Right at the beginning when I first moved to London, there was a huge push for digital photography. The idea of shooting and print analog film made you kind of a mad man. But there was a group of us that were all kind of trying to push to do it.
It was the simplicity more than anything as well. Like the camera I used, there were no batteries, it was almost just like a box. Then when I take those negatives and bring them into the darkroom, there’s 3 color dials. You could only go so far. So it was kind of like a blanket of security where it was so simple and it was so restricting that it actually helped.
You mentioned weather being a really key thing in the mood of this book, and of course the British Isles aren’t known for great weather. Did you ever have an experience where you felt like you couldn’t make a photo you wanted to because of the weather?
There’s one picture in particular, which is of a girl wearing a pink tracksuit. That day I’d caught a train to Aberdeen and the local ferry to the bottom of the Shetland Islands and then another ferry and then two bus rides and then it dropped me off and this kind of town hall and it was pissing down with rain. And I was like, what on earth am I doing here? It just so happened that they were having a pony competition. That girl, she was the last in the pony competition and she just looked amazing. I asked her parents if I could take her portrait and she took her hat off soaking wet and her hair was just like that! I couldn’t quite believe it. It reminded me that, even if you go all this way and it’s horrific weather and it isn’t sunny, you could still come back with something extraordinary. That kind of just reminds me that I don’t need the sun to find things.
For a long time that I actually left on the cover of the book really just for that very reason. But then actually in the end, because it didn’t feel right for anyone on the cover because the whole book’s about people. So why call one person out.
You’ve been working on this as kind of your general practice for 13 years. At what point did you realize it was going to turn into a book? Is it finished?
About a year ago, was when I really sat down and was like, I’m going to start printing all of these portraits. I kept looking at the Preston Bus Station book when I was at home and I really kind of missed going out and taking photos here. To be fair, I’d been going to a lot of places around the world doing exactly what I did here in England, where I turned up I would walk around, I take people’s portraits, but it was really such a shame not to be doing it here for some reason. It just sort of felt like the right moment to actually start going out again and taking people’s portraits here. I stopped myself thinking “Hold on. You just did that for 13 years. Why don’t you actually look at what you’ve got and do that and start that first.”
I was printing with the idea that I might go back out and continue. But then I got commissioned by the British Vogue to do one of three key worker portraits. At that moment when I finished what felt like really incredibly meaningful portraits, that was a perfect time to stop this project and they should finish the book.
It’s a little bit of a relief, actually, just the nature of portraiture and particularly if you’re photographing people outside or people who are around it could have gone on forever.
The very last photo after the acknowledgments and everything of, I assume your feet and a tree, really cheeky. You were saying before, the context of walking, walking, walking, and you see an entire town in a day or two days. But then also in the context of having done this for 13 years nonstop, in this like lying back moment is funny.
The idea to put that at the end really was it’s the last picture I took. So basically, just after the key workers portraits, I got commissioned to go to this place called Knepp Castle Estate. I kind of stuck it in there because it was a really nice physical end, and it was my last photograph so it felt nice at the end of the book.
Actually, the reason I like that even more is that I was asked to do a speech once for William Eggleston and I talked about his shoes in the speech—about him walking. I thought, you know, well, that’s kind of a nice nod to a, sort of, nerdy photography moment.
I would assume Eggleston, but did you feel like as you were making this work, there were particular influences that kind of stayed with you the whole way, be it like a film or painting or photographer?
I do always remember questioning, there would be hundreds of different photographers that would popped into my head and I would always be like, “God, I hope my photos don’t look like that, I really hope I’m not just copying that photographer.” I think that is a classic example of not enjoying being in the moment.
In reality, being alone in the middle of nowhere, walking with a really heavy camera is actually a nightmare. I would spend an awful lot of time questioning what I was doing and comparing myself to the other photographers. There was no one specific, it was just a constant stream of people that I was assisting, people that I saw in the newspaper, just all sorts of photographers.
The great thing about that is, also it’s really weird, I actually had to have a back operation like two years ago because I destroyed my back carrying the camera. But if I found someone to take a picture of or if I found a landscape, the pain would literally disappear. For those couple of minutes, obviously it was an adrenaline rush. In those moments I would also completely forget I compared myself to this person. It was a relief.
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