Interview by Cat Callender 

Photography Banquet 2004 © Nick Knight

Everything you should know about fashion’s most visionary photographer – in his own fine words…

* Contrary to popular belief, I do get out of bed for less than £100,000. I’d spend quite a lot of time in bed otherwise!

* I don’t like to wear green because it was the colour of my school uniform. It was the most revolting, unnatural shade of green I have ever seen. It has put me off green clothing for ever.

* I don’t have paintings or sculptures in my house, I have large chunks of minerals. I collect them. My favourite is hemimorphite. It’s usually a grey colour, a bit like concrete. But when you get copper running through it, it goes a most beautiful blue and looks like a crashing wave. * I’m not great with dishonesty as a trait in people. 

* Sometimes my clients think I’m being difficult. But actually I’m working hard to make their image great and I think they want to give up before I do. Sometimes people can mistake that for me being difficult or hard to work with. But I’m not. 

* When I was a skinhead in the 1970s, people would cross the road so as to avoid me. * I used to dream in French. Now my dreams are about abstract shapes, quite often reoccurring abstract shapes, which is fine, but it doesn’t make them very interesting. 

* I don’t enjoy parties, dinners or making small talk. Perhaps it’s because I’m 6ft 3in and most people aren’t, so I miss quite a lot of the conversation because it’s lower than my ears. I spend quite a lot of time at such events daydreaming, and then have to catch up on the conversation that I’ve either not heard or ignored! * I have a tattoo of a rose – where, I won’t say – that I had done when I was about 17. I photograph roses, so I’ve been in love with them for a long time. Architects make buildings and photographers photograph roses.

 * I wonder whether at the end of my life I’ll look back on it and be able to say, ‘You did something that was of some worth to people.’ That’s a lingering doubt of mine. 

The private view of Nick Knight’s exhibition SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution is on Monday at 7pm at Somerset House. It runs until 20 December. For more details, go to www.showstudio.com

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