Johnny's Blog

What kind of photographer are you anyway? 

My entire filmmaking career I've been asked what kind of filmmaker I am. And I've been asked more than once what kind of photographer I am. I never know quite how to answer. Do you shoot portraits? Sometimes. Landscapes? Yes, if the light is right. Street photographer? When I'm on the street, yes. You shoot nudes? I've shot a few. Are your photos on Instagram? No! And fuck Zuckerberg. Do you take pictures of dog shit? Only if it’s well formed. And then there are the photographs I've made while directing films; Locations, la mise en scène, lighting checks, actors, continuity stills, Polaroids, crew clowns, or simply... something caught my eye. And exactly what kind of films do you make? All kinds. Fuck off.

 

So perhaps the honest answer is: I have no fucking style!  And I think it's not such a bad thing.

 

Stoneycroft Interior - 1974

 

I first realised I had no fucking style as far back as my photography studies in the early 70s. I thought I should have a style because everyone else had a style: The other students were already refining their own - or emulating our professor, Terry Wild. He was a very successful photographer known for his stark minimalist monochrome works. His work is still highly collectable. I loved his work but I didn't want to emulate it.

 

Maybe it was my rebellious streak but I couldn’t help myself. My photos were all over the place; female forms, cinematic interiors, and extreme close-ups of cigarette butts. Fortunately Terry Wild encouraged me to go my own way. 

 

 

The problem with having a style

The real problem began when my filmmaking career took off. When I started directing music videos in the early 1980s the business was beginning to discover the idea of the director as a brand. This was the MTV era. Certain directors developed very recognizable visual signatures. They had their tricks, their particular camera moves, their way of lighting things. You could almost imagine the record company executive saying, Get the guy who does the shaky cam. There was a commercial logic to it. If something worked, do it again. I never really managed that. I remember wanting to direct a video for a particular metal band and having a record executive tell me: “You've never shot a music video for a metal band. How do we know you can do that?” 

 

Tanya, my 1st AD, was probably asking what kind of filmmaker I am.  Sydney, Australia, 1988    Photo: Gavin Harrison

 

I found it baffling. I was an experienced filmmaker by then, surely I could figure out how to shoot headbangers with zucchinis stuffed into their trousers. But that wasn't really how the business worked. The industry wanted to know what kind of director you were. The entire film business stopped just making movies and started building visual franchises. Execs became obsessed with "signature styles"; they wanted a repeatable, commercial franchise stamp.

 

And, to my detriment - maybe financially because I would have made a whole lot more money if I had a definable style - I could never give them a satisfactory answer. I wanted to make movies and documentaries and shoot F1 and rock concerts. I wanted to work in television. I wanted to experiment and make short films and direct theatre. Well, you're not supposed to do that. Eventually I managed to do all of it - with varying degrees of success depending on how you want to measure it. And that's when I place my hands over my crotch in the shape of a heart and say "I got your fucking style right here!"

 

Brett Michaels stepping off the tour bus into the fog. Poison "I Won't Forget You"  1986

Ironically, I ended up directing two successful videos for the glam-metal band Poison. They were wankers doing a great job of playing the role of wankers - but to get to my point - so much for not being able to shoot metal: "I Won't Forget You" spent 8 weeks in heavy rotation on MTV (playing ad nauseam every 4 hours), made the Top 100 Videos of 1987 list, and awarded me a platinum record from Capitol Records after the album peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts. And some of the still photos from those productions are among the images I like best from that period. The photograph of Brett Michaels stepping off the tour bus into the fog is a good example. It isn't particularly representative of some grand style. It was simply what was there and I happened to see it. My cinematographer Julio Macat and I shot it on 16mm film and I took a 35mm still of the same scene. You could say my cinematographic style emerged from that era, and it did, but it wasn't my only approach to filmmaking or photography.

 

"Makeshift Hash Pipe Still Life with Gold Record"   New York City, 1985

 

I have a few gold records from that era sitting in a storage unit. I never really knew what to do with them because I thought it was for the musicians. Some people found them handy to do lines of blow off of. I just smoked some hash and made still-life photos. I’m not belittling them. I put my heart and soul into those videos as did my producers and my crews. And that was the thing; even though I worked nonstop directing music videos for almost a decade, I never stopped being passionate. And I never stopped shooting stills.

 

“Guitar Pic Graveyard II: Daryl Hall's Pecker”    NYC - 1985

 

The filmmaking was so intertwined with my still photography - as if a 15 hour shoot day wasn't enough - I'd come home wired and just have a need to make a photograph. I did a whole series of extreme close-ups of hero guitar pics set in the bristles of my shoeshine brush like the dead grass of a cemetery… including Daryl Hall's pecker.  

 

So really, what kind of photographer are you?

What happened with my filmmaking also happened with my still photography. I never set out to become a particular kind of photographer. Sometimes my photos came about as a result of my work, and other times I was just bored. Quite often I was simply walking past something and thought: Oh, that's interesting. And sometimes it was: Dude, what the fuck is that?

 

"Dirt Lux"  Laguna Beach, 2021

Style isn't skill

I like to think of style and skill as two different things. I've developed skills over the years. Some of them are photographic, some cinematic. I developed darkroom skills in college. And then when I began filming Formula One I became a very good handheld cameraman. I once made a dramatic handheld shot walking backwards filming Mario Andretti as he made his way down Gasoline Alley at the Indy 500. When we got to the pits I circled around him to reveal 300,000 thousand people chanting "Mario, Mario". I got good enough at it that directors would occasionally hire me to stop directing and operate a handheld camera for them. And I loved it.

 

Operating a handheld camera in Paris, 1984

 

It was an opportunity to take a break from the stress of directing and, more importantly, to see the world through somebody else's eyes. I worked with directors I admired like CD Taylor. In the opening shots of Hall and Oates' "Say It Isn't So" video my handheld shots included walking backwards down a narrow spiral staircase to track John Oates' cowboy boots. I watched what these other director's were looking at, what they ignored, when they moved the camera and when they didn't. I learned a lot from them.

 

Operating a handheld camera on stage with Geoff Tate and Queensrÿche Live in Tokyo - 1984

Often times that meant standing on a stage for two hours with a heavy camera while a rock star screamed into a microphone. And speaking of metal, I've operated handheld on stage with Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, and Guns and Roses as well was Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, and Phil Collins. And quite often, such as with Queensrÿche Live in Tokyo, at the Nippon Seinen-kan (1984), I was also the Director of Photography. Wait a minute... I seem to be credited as Director. Maybe both. I honestly can't recall.

 

Whatever video I was shooting or directing, concerts aside, it likely had a cinematic style. Sometimes that would translate to a photographic style but more often, it didn't. And that distinction has become increasingly interesting to me.

 

Cinematic, or not to be

 

I know photographers who have spent years—or entire careers—exploring one particular way of seeing. And some of them are fucking brilliant. I'll look at a photograph and think: Damn, I wish I'd taken that. Or: Why didn't I think of that? Those photographs are often made by people who have gone very deeply into a particular visual language. They've experimented with it, refined it, discarded things, rediscovered things and eventually arrived somewhere remarkable. I admire that. I'm just not capable of doing it myself. I tend to get bored.

 

"SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence"   2010

 

I can make a photograph like "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" which happened while making an art house film. It's carefully composed and meant to be cinematic. The light and the atmosphere are important. I'm thinking about the relationship between the person and the landscape. And what it says. Then, on the same film production, this happens...

 

"The Weedeater"  Tuscany, 2010

 

I'm not sure what the style of "The Weedeater" is but it's definitely my style in that it's my warped sense of humour. And it represents a conscious effort to create an image. It's not street photography. I didn't just happen to see this guy while driving down the road. I conceived the shot for my film and convinced the actor to take off his clothes and cut the grass in my vineyard. And then I shot a still of it. As a photograph it stands alone because it's not in a cinematic aspect ratio.

 

Borrowing without belonging

In the same way that working for other directors expanded my visual horizons as a filmmaker, there are photographs I've made where I was consciously influenced by someone else. Last year I was overseeing a workshop for the Masters Cinema students at the University of Montpellier. The assignment was to photograph or film the aftermath of a devastating fire near Marseille. The landscape was blackened and strange. One of the photographers whose work I had seen recently used a very particular compositional device: putting the subject towards the edge of the frame rather than giving them the conventional central position. And it was stark. I liked the idea. So I borrowed it.

 

Diane: Marseille Fire, 2025

I combined it with what I wanted from the landscape: something almost ethereal, despite the fact that everything around my subject had been burned. The resulting photograph is quite unlike most of my other work. And that's fine. What fascinates me is that the photographer who inspired me has spent much of her career exploring that particular visual language. I couldn't imagine doing that. I could be inspired by it, I just couldn't live in that world.

 

Sometimes the photograph is simply there

Most of my favourite photographs weren't planned at all.

 

Patrick Hanson - Dallas - 1991

 

This is Patrick Hanson, the soundman on a documentary I shot with Genesis around 1991. We'd had a long, exhausting shooting day. We were walking back to the hotel, and there he was, flat on his face. I suppose we'd had a drink or three. The photograph wasn't part of the documentary. It was simply something I saw and I took the picture. I guess you could call it street photography. And I think that may be one of the reasons I've never developed a single photographic style. I'm too interested in what's actually in front of me.

 

"Natura Morta"   Provence, 2025

 

This photo was simply there. It required no art direction or rearranging or forthought. It was just a still life thoughtfully arranged for me by a dog and a cat.

 

The film can have a style. I don't have to.

There is another complication. Much of my photography has been made while making films. In those cases, the film already has a visual language. I don't necessarily need to impose that on my photos.

 

Fabio Marini in "Sanctified"  Tuscany 2009

 

This photograph came from my film "Sanctified". The image belongs to the world of the film. The location, the character, the costume, the light—all of it was part of a larger visual idea. But my set photographer Davide captured this image in black and white, and in many ways it summarises the film. Likewise with the image I made for Icehouse's "Electric Blue".

 

Electric Blue - Sydney, 1987

The style of the Icehouse video dictated the image. That doesn't mean I had suddenly discovered my style. It means I was doing my job. Perhaps that's one of the reasons the parallel between my filmmaking and photography is so strong. I've always responded to the project rather than trying to make the project respond to me.

 

Making something out of something I hated.

There was a period in the early 1990s when I was doing a lot of paranormal television. It was all the rage. Sightings. Paranormal Borderline. It required my documentary skills. And I'm sorry to say it laid the seeds for the horrific reality television we have today. I worked with some nice talented people and I traveled the world, but in general I hated it. Much of that paranormal stuff was what we called cheap-tv-caca - crap aimed at the lowest common denominator. For a while I felt as though I wasn't even a filmmaker. More like an actor waiting tables. But I had my Nikon F2 and my Contax T2, and occasionally I could make something interesting out of the ridiculousness.

 

"Past Life Hypnotic Regression of a Holocaust Victim Reincarnated as a Gay Nova Scotian Goat Farmer”  Nova Scotia - 1994

This was one of my first experiments with Photoshop. The production required the directors to shoot black-and-white stills while on location, which was fairly common at the time. Small documentary crew, no set photographer. I'm very grateful they made me do it. The material was absurd, but it gave me something to play with. The composite is crude by today's standards, but then again, so was the television. And making this image helped me reclaim some sense that I was still actually doing something creative.

 

Sometimes there is no story at all.

Then there are photographs that don't require my career experience, the circumstances, or any explanation at all.

 

"Condensation #1"  1985

 

Condensation. That's it. I don't need to tell you where it was taken or why I was there. It doesn't need to be a film still. It doesn't need to be documentary photography and it doesn't need to represent a style. I saw my girlfriend naked in the shower and I photographed it. And perhaps that's what I mean when I say I don't have a style. Not that my photographs are all over the place technically and not that I don't have preferences or that I haven't learned anything. 

 

Maybe my style is not having a style

Looking back across fifty years of making photographs, I can see recurring interests: My sick humour. Strange landscapes. Anything bizarre. Weather. Light. Things that don't quite belong, like naked men operating gardening equipment. So perhaps there is a style hiding somewhere in all of that. But if there is, I don't recognize it. And I'm not sure I want to. I've spent most of my career being asked what kind of filmmaker I was. Then what kind of photographer I was. I never had a satisfactory answer. 

 

"All things lovely, are not they far away?"   Mammoth - 2011

 

I have no regrets for not playing the style game, for doing just one thing, even if it did hamper my career financially. I wouldn't have it any other way. And it's not all about my lack of style. I had little respect for the so called greenlighters in Hollywood, and that contempt didn’t advance my career. I suppose that contempt stems from a childhood trauma which left me with an anti-authoritarian bent and sometimes a bad attitude. This would often manifest in the form of irreverence, primarily in my photography. Photography became my place to vent. If there is anything close to a style in my work it's that streak of irreverence.

 

"Less Lethal"  Steve Searles - The Bear Whisperer - Discovery Channel, Mammoth - 2010

 

When it comes to irreverence I met my match working with The Bear Whisperer Steve Searles. Together we made a formable pair and caused no end of trouble for the producers. Of course Steve had a lot less to lose than I did bucking the system. And he had a gun. 

 

"System Fucking"  Berlin - 2011

 

Moving to Europe 25 years ago definitely helped set me free from some of the network-studio-corporate wankage. My creativity felt rewarded and respected, and making art house films felt like the norm rather than the exception. Sadly network and studio system fuckwits aren't limited to Hollywood. When the head of drama at Mediaset in Italy told me in 2018 that their core audience is really stupid, I bailed on my passion project and was left with PTSD. I found refuge in my anarchic still photography and found simple pleasure in collaborating with my artist-wife on short films centred around her work. Art for art's sake. Money for God's sake.

 

Maybe the better question is: What are you looking at? Because the answer changes all the time and that's the whole point. I think there is something liberating about that. A photographer can spend thirty years refining one way of seeing the world. Another photographer can spend thirty years looking for something different every time they pick up a camera. Neither is more legitimate. One is a deep dive. The other is wandering around saying: “Oh, look at that.” I've always been more comfortable wandering around... and looking.