It’s a bizarre thing that I remember the first photograph I ever took. At the age of 9 on a family holiday in Venice using my mothers little Kodak 110 film camera. I remember the composition well, as I stood atop a bridge looking straight down a canal with symmetrical architecture both sides and a gondola in the middle of the water.
1. Tell us about your background and journey.
I am a London based photographer working globally within the design, interiors and architecture industries. I graduated from Falmouth College of Art in 2002 and started shooting commercially soon after. Working with some of the worlds biggest brands and designers as well as consistently working on my own personal projects that have gained international acclaim through awards, publications and exhibitions.
2. How and when did you realize your passion for photography?
It’s a bizarre thing that I remember the first photograph I ever took. At the age of 9 on a family holiday in Venice using my mothers little Kodak 110 film camera. I remember the composition well, as I stood atop a bridge looking straight down a canal with symmetrical architecture both sides and a gondola in the middle of the water. From that moment on I was bitten by the photography bug. I love symmetricality within architecture even now and I can’t imagine a more perfect start to my image-making career with a photograph taken in the birthplace of modern-day photographic processes.
3. What are some tips you would like to share with amateur photographers?
Photography is a hugely exciting way of documenting the world and showing how you view it. Look at image-makers and artists work that you admire and learn how to see in your own way.
We all walk around with a camera attached to us these days and I would say to pull out any camera and look around you for something that seems significant and even if you don't know why, you will work it out. Instagram is also a wonderful tool for research and building up a portfolio, but don't believe all you see from others. Likes are not that important. It's the enthusiasm and passion of creating that people will follow. Essentially make photographs that you feel passionate about.
4. What are the important skills one should have to be a successful photographer?
I would say patience is the most important thing I have in my arsenal. Sometimes waiting, analysing and watching is the best approach. A scene may seem perfect when you point your camera at it, but the more you look at it carefully, you see things that could be better. A person walking through a building could absolutely make the photograph, similar to the sun changing the length of a shadow, or simply the quality of light or detail within the sky.
Nothing is ever absolutely perfect, but if we can get as close to that as we possibly can in camera, then chances are when it comes to pressing the shutter it will be so much more satisfying.
5. What are various opportunities available for aspiring photographers?
Right now it is very difficult to find the opportunities in the way I received those chances that built my career. My name became synonymous with high-end retail photography after just one editorial commission after university, which opened many doors.
However, I was always super proactive in contacting people I particularly wanted to work with, and I still believe this approach works, but these days competition is wildly different. The most important thing I would say is to make the work you believe in, become well informed on your subject and master any aspects you see as lacking in your approach.
Speak to people about your work and never be afraid of critical analysis. You will never please everyone all of the time, you only need one person to believe in you, and build upon that. Do some portfolio reviews and show your projects in exhibition form as much as you can.
6. Which is your favourite book and why?
I am an avid collector of photography and art books and every single book on my shelf is special to me in its own way. If I’m doing a personal project on a specific subject or location I’ll likely have a book that will help inform my approach and decision making within the project.
But I would say there are two books in particular have helped to shape the way I view the world, photography, landscape, architecture and life.
During my degree, in 2000, I went to the MOMA in New York to see the Andreas Gursky retrospective and bought the publication in conjunction to the show. His super gargantuan scale and colour, digitally altered photographs showed me a way of exhibiting and showing a single photograph in a way that stops the viewer in their tracks and ask questions about what we are looking at. The dawning of digitally manipulated imagery also opened a world of change and the show, as well as the book, became my art-bible in changing the way I approached and viewed a subject. I still use certain elements now in my own work, mainly his use of carefully considering every fine detail and scale as well as a determination to create utter perfection within each photograph.
The second book is Alec Soth’s Dog Days in Bogotá. I became a huge fan of his work through this book. It’s a much more documentative and quirky way of looking at life, people and a landscape.
That approach, almost like a carefully considered editorial style, helped me to work more on precise opportunistic photographs made with less perfection and time consumption but with more character and story making. A way of making the perfect project as opposed to a perfect single image as an artform.
- Andrew Meredith (Photographer)
Andrew Meredith is an award winning interiors, architecture and portrait photographer based in London. Shooting globally for editorial and commercial commissions for high-profile clients such as Chanel, Selfridges, Moooi, Google, Burberry, Hermes, Frame Magazine, Elle Décor, Penguin, Esquire UK and USA amongst others.
Andrew studied Photography at Falmouth College of Arts, graduating in 2002 with Honours. Soon after, he moved to London working as an assistant to other photographers, before quickly progressing to shooting independently.
Andrew's editorial and personal projects have also gained his photography high-profile recognition from industry press. He was awarded ‘Best in Book’ in Creative Review's Photography Annual for his Slaughtermen abattoir documentary series, his third project to be featured in the annual. Shortly after, Andrew’s first major solo exhibition opened in 2010 at Riverside Studios, London, and later transferred to London's famous Truman Brewery Gallery. The exhibition featured a selection of images from Excursions, a project showcasing images captured whilst wandering in South America.
Andrew’s next personal project ‘Hashima’ documented the former Japanese mining Island of the same name, which was exhibited at Photofusion in 2014 later transferring to the Ace Hotel, London in 2015. Hashima Island was once the most densely populated on earth but abandoned in 1976.
Andrew’s next major project came in the form of ‘Introversion’, a landscape project exploring spacial nothingness, which was awarded a bursary to continue the project and was launched and exhibited in full at the Photofusion Gallery in Brixton, London in 2016 before taking a six month residency at Blacks private members club in Soho, London in 2017.
Andrew is currently working on several personal projects in including ‘Neon Garden’. Yanzhong Park is a 1000 year old public garden in the centre of downtown Shanghai. Peaceful and idyllic during the day and designed and manicured to transport people from concrete and noise, surrounding you in plush green in an otherwise intense grey and concrete jungle. By evening the gardens are lit intensively with neon emulating from the 10 lane Yan’an overpass that is built over the top. The garden, at times almost seems like a film set, a surreal manmade faux garden lit with neon and tungsten.
- Website: Andrew Meredith
- Interviewed By Pratibha Sahani
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