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Harry Borden
Harry is one of the
UK’s finest portrait
photographers and
his work has been
widely published.
He has won prizes
at the World Press
Photo awards
(1997 and 1999), and was awarded an
Honorary Fellowship by the RPS in 2014.
The National Portrait Gallery collection
holds more than 100 of his images.
Visit http://www.harryborden.co.ukI took were only lit by daylight.
It was so easy to get interesting
results there; the light took
care of itself, so I could
concentrate on having a good
rapport with the subject and
capturing that relationship in
the pictures.Quirky pose
I was shooting on my two main
cameras at that time, which
were both medium format film
cameras: a Fujifilm GW690, a
6x9 rangefinder, and a Pentax
67, sometimes described as an
SLR on steroids.
Bob was wearing a light grey
suit and patterned tie and
again was happy to do
whatever I asked. I shot him in
a range of poses, some with
him pulling a surprised face or
smiling, and others where I
asked him to have ‘absence of
thought’. There was a white
box in the studio and I asked
him to sit on it and look to one
side, his feet dangling above
the floor. The pose was quirky
but a little sad and vulnerable- a side that was very real, but
one that TV viewers didn’t
often see.
I remember saying to him
that it was nice to photograph
people like him because he was
part of society’s collective
consciousness after being
watched by millions of people
over many years. One of my
portraits from this shoot has
ended up going into the
National Portrait Gallery
collection. I’m pleased, because
for his professionalism and
dedication he deserves to
be there.
As told to David Clark
Harry asked Bob for
an ‘absence of
thought’ for this
quirky studio shot