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Every person has a style, and every style deserves support. Enter your style strategy cheerleader and founder of BU Style, Natalie Tincher. Since 2010 Natalie has worked with hundreds of personal clients as well as large corporations and a major global news network—and she is here to guide you.
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A trend you'd like to see disappear forever can be in any avenue. I don't know. Maybe photographs of food. Welcome to wear who you are a podcast that takes the fear out of fashion and hold space for everyone to explore how to connect your authenticity with your personal style. I'm your host, Natalie Tinscher, founder of V style, expert style strategist and your enthusiastic friend and safe space of support. I believe that
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Hello again, it is a Where Who You Are Wednesday. And today we have an exciting episode with an industry insider. Our guest, Iconic Photography, has been at the forefront of the art world since the mid -90s. I'm talking about Miles Aldridge and his unique blend of vibrant acidic colors, domestic critique, and fashion photography. He's also managed to continue creating arresting and relevant images for 30 years, which is truly, truly remarkable.
I thought it would be great to have him on and to get a sense of what he's learned and seen over the last three decades as the photography world has shifted away from film to digital. And also what he's learned about storytelling through image. The stories Miles tells with his photographs are immediately recognizable. His pieces are just so iconic and defined by these little clues that the viewer can piece together a narrative. And I love it. I love to look at them and piece together a narrative myself and...
see how it relates to me, to feminist critique, all of it. It's so amazing. If you're not familiar with his work already, I highly recommend just looking up a couple of his pieces before you jump into the episode. With that being said, let's do it. Enjoy this installment of Where Who You Are with Miles Aldridge.
Hello, Miles. Thank you so much for being part of the podcast. We're so excited to have you. My pleasure. Will you let everyone know where you're recording from? This is my studio in London. It's just off Bloomsbury, between Bloomsbury and King's Cross. It's very central. It's a beautiful old building, I think was part of the post office back 100 years ago, but it's a big space. And I just love being here. It's such a great kind of atmosphere.
I have all my work around me and it's just a place I come every day, Monday to Friday, whether I'm working on something or not. I just get, know, I move things around in my head. you find that the separation of having a studio versus home to be really critical in your process and your life? Yeah, I found that out quite early on actually, and realized that having a space separate from the family was crucial.
to kind of go really deep into ideas. Otherwise, I tended to just sort of work on my ideas through the night while the children were asleep. And then when I wake up in the morning, all my drawings and stuff were like in disarray, know, nappies on top of things and complete chaos. So yeah, I think the separation has been really, useful for me in terms of...
keeping an idea going. So what's great is I can work on something here, close the door, come back, it's still exactly as I left it, you and then you can kind of progress things, you hope. I mean, it doesn't always work that way, of course. In terms of mentally too, does it help you separate, I'm home or are you always thinking, are you thinking what's at the studio? No, I love being home and that is, yeah, very, very different from being in the studio. I do like to kind of cut off, you know, I work.
quite sort of like regular hours, weirdly, for an artist in terms of, you know, I like to get home around about six o 'clock to help with the kids and have dinner and with them, you know, get to see them a bit before bedtime. And then the weekends, you know, I'm them the whole time. But I do think there is a very healthy switch between being here and being in kind of work mode where you might be spending sort of hours just dealing with one question about a color or something or...
a prop. I am my own boss, so I can spend as long as I want on anything here. Nobody's looking over my shoulder to sort of like check that I'm working. So there's quite a sort of privileged position, I think, in that respect, in terms of you really can just spend a huge amount of time on something that is minuscule, that maybe somebody else might think, what's the problem? Why don't you just do both? And often it can be
The case would be easier just to do both and to choose one. I'm, as people who know my work, will know, the work is very precise and there's a kind of, there's a sort of precision to every kind of element of it, which I honestly is quite exhausting to be the person that is trying to be in charge of all those things. But, I find that, being well prepared for a photo shoot.
and having a sort of, well, really having a plan. mean, and the best equivalent, I guess, is like a film director with a script and a storyboard. So I like to be, I like to have that level of kind of like preparedness or going into a shoot. And, you know, it's kind of a juggling act in your brain, thinking about who you're gonna photograph, what they're gonna wear, what the prop is, what the background is, what the light might be.
what you're trying to say anyway in terms of what is the point of this picture, you know? And, you know, so then I draw. So then I do a lot of drawing, a lot of sketching, and those things are a way for me to kind of think out the idea just to myself. And then, because the drawing, like a lot of drawings in arts, you know, they're really loose and rough. They're kind of like a...
a shorthand for the picture. And so they, use them, I use them to inform myself. does is, is this interesting? Does this work? have I seen it before? You know, have I done it before? Is it, what do I need? If I, know, because, know, what's amazing about doing a drawing with a pencil is that you can draw, you know, you can draw a helicopter. You can draw the empire state building. You can draw the ocean, but then the reality is.
you've got to go and get the helicopter, you've got to get the Empire State Building permission to shoot there and, you know, we'll be in the middle of the ocean. And so, but with the drawing, you you have complete freedom to let your mind and your imagination wander. But then when you come to the reality of making the picture, it's like that freedom now has, again, I would say rather like making a movie, now wear the producer's hat. It's like, okay, do we really need this helicopter?
Right. you start, that's your process of, of drawing first of your association and then refining. then, you know, I think it's with so many creatives of what's the big picture. How do I get all the ideas out? And then it's what editing, editing, editing, what's possible, what's possible. Does this make sense to the story? You start kind of picking through. And it's also, you know, you may want to have.
an orange piano in your picture. But if it doesn't exist, you're going to either make one, commission someone to make one and paint one or get one and paint it or, you know, but maybe you find a, you find a piano that's painted green and it works just as well. You know, those things, you know, it's the, that is the kind of the ongoing back and forth between the ambition of the idea.
and the reality of the shoot, you know, between those two things you are. And in your brain, how do you reconcile that and make those decisions of what is, what do I push for? Or what do I say? What's possible? What's there? And what's a little bit, I don't want to say easier, but does this still communicate the vision I have? Yeah, you know, it's, it's a, it's a constant back and forth between, you know, myself and, know, whoever gets the,
the of helping me with the set design and the props. Those conversations are how you find the difference between what you want and what you can get. then as things shift, you then revisit. actually the way I work is I start with these drawings and then I come down to a drawing, which I think...
is the idea and I may color that in to give references to the colors of that space that I'm working on. And then, and then we'll have these meetings with the set design and we'll talk about stuff and they will go and find stuff and they'll bring stuff back to me in photos of it. I'll go, yes, this is great. This is more interesting, my idea. So let's use this. But now I need to change the drawing. So I'll then do another drawing probably based on what's available, you know, it's, it's, I mean, I imagine anyone listening to think it thinks.
In this day and age when photos can be taken like this, I am making a huge sort of like effort to slow the whole thing down, you know? So all of these things stopped me taking photographs because I, you know, I want, I've always wanted, I guess for egotistical reasons, for my photographs to be recognizable at like 50 yards, know, so when you see, you see,
the announcement for an exhibition of my work or maybe some advertising I've done. You can tell that it's one of my pictures. And I think in this current time of mass images, know, the sort of like the sea of images we find ourselves in, you know, over my career, which has about 30 years now in the business, that has become, I wouldn't say harder, but I would say...
the, the quantity of images that are floating around has become just insane. Like obviously with Instagram and la de da, we are just, you know, sort of swamped by pictures. So, I mean, my mission has never really changed in terms of I want your picture to look like your picture and I don't want it to look like this person's picture. Those sort of, that mission is still the forefront of like what,
makes me come here into the studio to try and do stuff because I want to make pictures that have not been made before that have a personality and have something to say that, you know, it seems amazing now to even think that this is possible in the world that we live in. But I want people to stop and look at the picture and in a way look deeper into the picture than...
than we're now trained to with, you know, whether it's magazines or Instagram, you know, we are consuming images at an incredible rate. It's interesting to me anyway, that my mission has always been to stop people doing that, whether it was when I started, which is back in the days of the magazines, when there was no internet, and you were just trying to stop somebody just, you know, I would see people flicking through a magazine, Vogue, possibly in a hairdressers and think, God, I can't believe.
my job is that, know, to, don't want my job to be that, that this, I make the, I do all this work. I make this image and this person in the hairdressers, they look at my picture for possibly one whole second as they're flicking through a magazine, you know? And so I, know, with that goal, I tried to stop the page turning. And of course now this become a gazillion times faster, you know?
I need to stop someone scrolling. I'm not sure you can stop someone scrolling. mean, you obviously, you know, scroll, scroll away. That's what, that's what, that's what, you know, you enjoy. But, this, my, my sort of love of photography, my love of images, my belief in the power of images to move us and to affect us and to, hold us actually, it's like a magic spell, you know, I mean, I, it's
Again, this maybe all sounds a bit silly about a photograph, Not at all. That's my experience of photography. I feel very lucky to have lived through a period of photography when great photographers like Richard Avedon and Irving Pan, Helmut Newton were creating incredibly original works on a weekly, or sorry, monthly basis in the various Vogue's.
I sort of, you my career starts as their careers are not ending. I overlapped with Avedon, I overlapped with Newton as well, and Penn too. But the, you know, I was in the same magazines as all of those guys as a sort of, you know, as a kind of, as a baby, you know, stuff. So that kind of mantle from them was handed to me in terms of this idea of making pictures which are truly personal and original and
in some respects, slightly, I don't know a better word than shocking, but I don't really mean shocking. I mean, to shock you into waking up and looking at a picture instead of - I think that's what they do is I've seen your work in person and then just in prep for this of, you know, just refreshing and you do stop on the images. You look at the facial expressions, you look at, I personally look at every detail and -
say, what is this saying? That 50 foot view is bright. There's color, there's pop, but then you zoom in and there's so much to wade through in a story. for me, I could relate so many of the stories of the women that you portray. I mentioned this to myself of growing up in a very traditional Mormon religion and household and saying, what is this saying about
you know, a women's role or domestication or, and then you can extend it to the rest of life. mean, that's where it's like, what does it say about something that looks bright and beautiful on the outside? And then you zoom in and you think there's, there's more layers to it. You talk about all the layers in the, in the picture. And, know, this is what it's kind of like being figured out during all the sketching process and, and, working with the, the set designer and thinking what these little things mean.
you know, rather like Renaissance painting, where there's, you know, there's the main subject, but often there's still life in it. And there's, you know, other objects that kind of imply the theme of the painting and give little kind of like, still little nods and winks and asides to the main subjects of the image, you know. And I like to, I like to have that same kind of like focus on
everything in the picture, whether it's like a discarded cigarette in an ashtray, that then needs to be beautifully photographed and lit and photographed and needs to be the right type of cigarette and which cigarette would it be and is there lipstick on the end and is it burnt down? So all of those minor fractional details add up to a picture that is expanding on a theme.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I like the idea that all these objects and these things resonate through the picture. They're a little clue. To me, they feel like little clues almost of what's happening. I mean, this photograph behind me, which is you can see a section of it, the channel 21 is because it was made in 2021, for example. So those kind of things, if you allow yourself to think and think and think and think in this space like I do, then...
instead of it being just channel one, you think it could be this because it allows you to play visually. I always liked the idea from Picasso actually that he used the word jour, meaning day, in his early Cubist paintings. Because he would take the word jour from the journal, the French word for magazine. So you'd see this a lot in some of the... But of course, jour is also to play. And I think that is really fundamental in...
work of Picasso, I like to think of my own work and indeed making a giant assumption or a connection there. But I like the idea of the playfulness, which is interesting because the work is so, you know, as I mentioned earlier, there's such a kind of like work ethic about my approach to work that is not, I'm in a way not playful, but I guess I am playful and not playful at the same time. And there's sort of those two sides of my brain.
You know, meaning that there's a play about adding things and sprinkling things into the picture, you know. And what they That you're very serious about your work. But I'm very serious about my work, yes. Well, and how much of these stories and influence come from what's happening in the world around us? Like I know a lot of the work was 90s. We have a grunge era. We have a lot of, you know, social movements going on. How much of that influences your art or?
Or is it more just in your head what's going on? Yeah, I I began during the grunge era in photography. That's how I got my break actually. And I apologize if anyone's heard this story before because it's been well reported. But I was actually working as a pop video director. And not a very good one as well, I will say.
I then, and I still do have ambitions to be a film director. And I thought by making pop videos would be a way into making movies. that didn't happen. But what did happen was that my girlfriend of the time was sort of like, well, she decided she wanted to be a model. And it seems ludicrous now, actually. And people listen to this and think, well, this must be a hundred years ago. But actually, this is true.
So back in 1994, I guess, when this was happening, the idea that one could be a model under six foot tall was just ludicrous. It was not happening. Right. And the idea that someone wasn't like a sort of super glamazon and could be a model was also not happening. It's hard to imagine because things have moved so much. Thankfully.
But, know, so my girlfriend was diminutive, small and very beautiful. She looked like somebody from a pre -Raphaelite painting, would say very, very English, very sort of, I don't know how to describe that, but very, very pale and very romantic looking in a kind of pre -Raphaelite way. But she was not, didn't have any of these like, you know, things to do with modeling, but then Kate Moss came along and changed everything. And when Kate Moss started modeling and she was five, six, I guess, I don't really know.
No, it made it possible for that. So my girlfriend went to a model agency that said, ask your boyfriend to take a picture of you and then we'll send you around to see the magazine. So it was very simple picture. Couldn't be more simple. Just black and white in a park, her looking back at me in the camera. And this became the one picture in her portfolio. And she went to Vogue with this portfolio of one picture.
and introduced herself and I met her after this meeting and I said, look, so how did it go at Vogue? And she said, well, the funny thing is they want to meet you. And I was, we were in a pub at the time and I was, the beer was like at this position, literally, all this beer came flying out of my mouth because I had completely misunderstood, I had no idea what she was talking about. It was not my ambition to be a photographer, but it turned out that because
of grunge photography, because of Kate Moss, because of all these new things happening in photography, that the magazines were looking for the next sort of new thing, meaning someone who wasn't polluted with all the old ideas of glamour photography, of lighting, like, you know, big hairstyles and this simple picture of a girl taken by her boyfriend in a park.
I mean, it couldn't be more, it couldn't be more simple, but it was, guess it had a purity to it. And, went to see it. It's refreshing. Yeah. I went to see them and within six months I had a, you know, I was shooting the covers for W magazine, and, working every day in New York. mean, it was nuts. It just was like, it snowballed from nothing really, but it was this one picture.
that was a kind of a, I guess it had kind of elements of a grunge thing to it because we just, that's how we lived in a kind of slightly, we lived in a council flat, cheap flat, and we wore vintage clothes and da, da, da. So we kind of like, you know, she was kind of like a poster girl for that thing as it was happening. And, you know, I never looked back and she actually.
didn't enjoy the modeling thing at all and gave up on that and went on to do other things with music. I found entering that world of fashion photography so fascinating and liberating. It was a great time. as I said earlier in this talk, I entered into fashion photography while you could still bump into people like Helmut Newton and Avedon.
in the studio next door to you in New York. You know, so I met all of those guys. I was a huge fan, very in awe of them. And I remember when I met Avedon, he came into my studio once and he didn't know who the hell I was. was, I was nobody. So why should he? But the stylist I was working with introduced me as Miles Aldridge. And he said, so you're Miles Aldridge, which was such a charming.
thing to say, I know he didn't know who the hell I was, but it was just a very sweet, you know, thing. Very kind and open and warm. I bet that made you feel amazing. Yeah, I was like, I mean, later I realized he didn't know who the hell I was, but it was such a kind gesture. You know, the guy he'd made, really in, I mean, you can't say invented fashion photography, but he made such a, put such a on it.
You know, I used to, I couldn't afford his book in the American West when it came out. I couldn't afford it when I was an art student, but I used to go on my lunch break and just flick through it and just be amazed by these pictures, you know, and then, and then go back to art school.
and then pair that with industry advice so you also know how to wear longer by styling what you already have. Subscribers also get a free downloadable packing guide so that you can learn all the tips of the stylist trade when it comes to planning and packing for a trip. Head to the show notes of this podcast episode to subscribe to our monthly newsletter and claim your free packing guide resource. Well, and I think that's such an interesting topic of how fashion photography has evolved.
now and where we stand and then how you've separated and now you're inspired by your own work. It was a great start. was a great time to be in fashion. think it's like we all look back and like what a time to be in it. But things have changed so much and I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that. Sure. Well, things have changed a lot. mean, you know, when I started in fashion photography,
it was, you know, there was clearly a hierarchy to the business. You know, I've mentioned the three gods in a way, Avedon, Penn and Newton, who in their own ways represented different sort of like strands of fashion photography. know, Newton, you know, very sexual and erotic, Avedon, very sort of classical and humanistic as well. Really like about the human and Penn in a way was sort of just an amazing
sort of singular eye in terms of being so precise. know, when you think of Penn's work, was just so precise and clean. And, you know, so I guess with the fashion magazines and with the fashion shows, and you had these kind of great sort of like geniuses like Alexander McQueen, Galliano, of course, Karl Argerfeld, and the shows were just sort of extraordinary pieces of theater where so much
incredible effort was created around the clothes, that the clothes were given a kind of a narrative, a backstory. mean, Alexander McQueen shows particularly was so sort of dark and, know, filled - I re -watch regularly. Yeah, yeah, you know. So, you know, I came up throughout time where this was a genuine excitement about expressing a world.
and not just the clothes. I think that was the best I could feel is the big difference between then and now in terms of the, that was a long time ago. And, you know, the fashion industry has been changed by so many sort of economical changes, particularly the internet and digital photography and those differences are insane and incredible and huge and just gigantic.
How to summarize, I think the main difference is it feels like when I started photography and I entered into that world, particularly at Vogue Italia, there was a clear sense of which Vogue's were the most interesting ones and which photographers were the most interesting, doing the most interesting work for the most interesting Vogue's. And there was a kind of, yeah, as I said, like a hierarchy and you wanted to be included in that stable.
Italian Vogue was interesting because Franco Sotzani, who was the editor in chief, she said to me that because her magazine was in the Italian language, she knew it could never compete with like American Vogue or British Vogue for the journalism for any of the articles. So she felt because images are don't need to be translated. Images are without a language. If her magazine had the most powerful images,
then she had a chance to succeed. So with that mindset, she set out to make the most visually exciting Vogue. And I think most people would agree her tenure at Vogue Italia was by far the most interesting Vogue to work for in that period from the 90s through to the early 2000s. And then alongside this ambition of Franco Sazzani to create the most visually exciting Vogue, you also had that time in fashion.
where we were kind of like spoiled for choice with these incredible geniuses like Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld, Vivian Westwood. And as a young photographer in my late 20s, early 30s, going to Paris to see the fashion shows, it was just an extraordinary experience of these shows that one after the other outdid.
each other to be visually exciting. There was a real sort of sense of drama and narrative and theater. just, you know, I mean, was, course, it was all fantasy. that was what was so exciting. But then you had people like Helmut Lang that were the opposite of fantasy, is a cold sort of V &E vision of like the future. you know, all of them were, I would say, what I, if I had to summarize it,
everything involved in everything that I took from fashion then was felt like a really like a complete world. You whether it was McQueen or Galeano Westwood, you really felt like there was nothing superfluous to this universe that the hair, the makeup, the models, the setting, blah, blah, blah. Everything was to a point. you know, bit by bit for various reasons, the fashion industry couldn't sustain.
these kind of singular visions and needed to appeal to a much more mass market open up to the other territories in the world. you know, so I think that had a, that had a quality of, that, that, had the effect of diluting the visions of, and the extreme, the extreme visions, know, that were just in a way, in a way, that's what was so exciting about fashion then. And so
that excitement has become watered down by just the, you know, if the very subjects, if the clothing, if the designs, if they're becoming less extreme, more easy, you know, then that has an effect that sort of percolates down through everything into, I believe, the imagery of, you know, what the photographers can make from it. I mean, that said, I was never really led by.
the subject or the stories I saw in fashion magazines, sorry, in fashion shows. You know, it's like, so I wouldn't see a John Galliano show about pirates and then want to do a shoot about pirates. But even so, seeing one of his shows with all of this incredible, you know, is the production of a Hollywood movie, you know, is so intense. It made you want to make great work, you know.
But my work nearly always came from my own personal ideas. And I would typically meet with Franca Sozani in Paris. We would meet at the Paris Ritz. And I would show my ideas as drawings. from those, she would then concoct a of a fashion point of view for those things. And I think that was what was so brilliant about fashion at the time and art is that it wasn't meant for us to all have it.
It was meant for us to be inspired by it and get our own creativity to personalize it to ourselves. So I'd love to take that to then your work now over the years when you've moved out of that world and your work stands alone. It truly does. How do you stay inspired or where do you get your inspiration over such a, you know, through all these changes going on in the world and so much stuff. How do you stay in your lane and, and stay invigorated?
Yeah, well, that is a good question. I'm not sure I have the answer, but I have somehow managed to stay in my lane through all of these changes. guess sort of a love of the history of photography is probably fundamental to that because even though the landscape for fashion photography and photography in general has evolved immensely, the history of photography is...
you know, is very long. I mean, it goes back to like 1830, I suppose. you know, we have, you know, I guess I would say I love photography before the arrival of digital. And so, and for that very reason, I still shoot on film because there's something about, there's a couple of things to say about that, but there's something about the photochemical reaction of the image being put into chemistry and coming out and being revealed as a picture that I find still
magical and mysterious. There's also the idea that not seeing the picture as you're making it makes the picture in a way more precious and difficult. So those things, when we are, a photographer, when I'm looking through my lens trying to get this picture, there's a sort of a sense of anxiety that I may not get this picture.
And that sense of anxiety actually drives you to get the picture, but then to get it in a kind of extra way, you know, and to go beyond it, you know, whereas I believe, and I might be wrong about this, but it's just my own experience. But I believe that when you have instant gratification for the picture from a digital screen, you, you stop your, your drive, you're like quite, you become satisfied. I sort of enjoy that anxiety rush that you get from not knowing when you got the picture.
And that has kind of kept me, I guess those things have kind of kept me in my lane to use your expression rather than adapting to digital or faster ways of working. I mean, as just the everyday person too, I remember the time that doesn't have your creative genius and brain and film of, I remember those times when you didn't want to waste a frame on
you know, just anything. And so it was so exciting to take your film to the store and get it back and go through them. And sometimes you're like, is this going to be totally ruined? Is it going to have been exposed? And so there is something. And then I can imagine for you hearing all the prep that you do, then that is one of the drivers of that of every detail is setting yourself up for the vision and the success, because it's not like you can say, I'm going to go back and just edit that. I'm just going to go back and do that. And I can see that being.
very, a driver. It's a driver. Yeah. It's just a driving force. And, know, it can, you know, you can become so sort of like obsessed about one detail in the picture, you know, that in a way doesn't make sense to the other people on the set. Like why, why does this, you know, the flowers in the foreground have to be a certain way I'm trying, I'm trying to get it all in camera, you know, rather than, you know, reconstructing the whole thing in post -production.
I, there's something about the, you know, I'm still, I still believe, you know, in the immediacy of photography and to capture an image and for that image to be sort of like emblazoned onto that piece of celluloid and then printed. I'm not saying that don't use post -production cause I do, you know, in the same way that one would use dark room techniques to kind of make a picture, work on a picture and improve a picture. But you know, there's, there's.
For me, you know, that still needs to look like a photograph. And I think when too much retouching or comping or what have you is becoming, is involved, you know, it's a bit like when I watch a movie with too much CGI, you you sort of see, don't believe this battle sequence for a second with millions of people, you know, just, a, kills my interest. and I just don't wait for that scene to finish and then get back to the story more or less.
But I think the same in photography, that images that are overly manipulated and I guess the main thing is that they don't feel like in any way they could have been made by a camera. They feel like the computer has had too much of a say in the picture. great. I agree with that. Well, and speaking of film, I know that you mentioned that you were involved in film and now you still have an interest in film.
Do you have aspirations or is there anything you're working on in that direction? Well, I've been working on an idea for a film for about two years now. It's a real kind of like a labor of love. I'm not sure I have a talent for it. We'll have to find out if ever. But the, you know, the sort of the idea of a film that is purely visual, I think is, you know, I don't believe
I don't believe in that. I think for a film to work, it has to work in a dramatic way. The narrative has to make some kind of sense. And it's interesting because I think that often with my work, there's a kind of cinematic quality to my work where it feels like there's something is happening. We're not quite sure. It's sort of interesting. We're not exactly sure what's going on. For me, that is how great images, paintings, and photographs work is that
the image is not easily read, not completely. It can't be didactic because you sort of see it. There's a mystery involved. Why is this person doing this that I don't know, but I like it? You're drawn into it. Now, the problem with making a film is if you have a film where you don't quite understand what they're doing or what's happening, that is a real drag because with a film, we want resolution. We want to understand
the journey this person's been on. So there's an interesting kind of contrast between, I think, still images, which I think work best when they retain mystery, and the moving image, where I think it works best when the mystery is explained to some degree. Anyway, that's what I'm finding. mean, you know, no, yeah. So it's...
Calling upon a skill set, again, I don't know that I necessarily have, which is writing dialogue. It's interesting for me to think about how the people in these pictures would speak and what they would say and what they would think. It's something I've never been asked to do before, confronted with that question. But yeah, I mean, as a consumer of films, I've been so...
influenced, inspired, amazed by images in cinema. That so much my work draws from those references of films like Hitchcock or David Lynch, Federico Fellini. That I wanted to see whether that love of cinema and that love of the moving image could actually translate to actually a moving image. I love that. I think that's such an interesting juxtaposition of
where the story's coming from and how the story needs to be, it can't be loose and open for complete interpretation. You have to give the audience a direction. And of course they're gonna still play some of their own meaning and reference to it, but you've got to give them a little more to work with, That's so inspiring and interesting. So I think we can start to wrap up this really great conversation. And as we are a style podcast, I'd like to ask just a few things.
as your style, fashion, art. Something I always find really interesting with creatives is in the fashion world and art world of your personal style, the clothing you put on yourself of, do you tend to go more simplistic because your brain is filled with so much creativity that needs to be output or do you feel like you dress in a ways that mimic your art? Well, it's interesting. I always thought that I should wear
lots of colors, bright colors, stripes, colored socks, jumpers in colors. But every time I've tried that, it just doesn't work on me. don't know. It just looks, I just look like a clown. So I do, as you can see, I have a kind of very workman -like aesthetic that is very, very simple without any kind of...
attachment to a brand really. I, you know, I can say truthfully that I'm not, you know, as a, you know, I not that interested in, fashion, in terms of what I would wear. I just like to, you know, to wear something. I just need to clothes on my body that I don't necessarily have to think about, right? Yeah, that's kind of it. You know, it may be.
It may just be, you know, I mean, I'm here on my own mostly, in the studio. mean, have my studio assistant. but otherwise I guess I'm just here to do my work and there's a sort of, I guess it's like a no thrills, you know, yeah. So the workman like quality to that way of thinking. I have found that to be a common, a common thing. even when I'm with clients so much of like, it's not about me, it's about the work that I'm doing. I'm, I'm not.
I don't need to be the loudest one in the room calling attention. I want to be pragmatic and functional so I can put my energies into the work and the people around me. think it's also, you know, I'm often thinking about a picture and I don't want to really think about myself. there, you know, there's, if that makes sense, sort of, in a way I am, yeah, sort of lost in my own.
thinking mostly while I'm here. And the idea that I would sort of like be aware of what I was wearing seems to bring too much attention back to me when trying to kind of like delve into something. It's a distraction. Yeah. If it was, would distract the work. Yeah. I love the idea of one of my heroes, Alfred Hitchcock, who apparently had just, you know, 14 identical...
black suits and tie and white shirt that he wore, know, so he didn't have to think about what he would wear. I haven't achieved that. So, but that kind of thinking I can appreciate, you know. And it's common among a lot of people that are experts or geniuses that that is a lot of the thinking of, just put what's on your body, make it easy, make it a uniform so that way all of the energies can go into.
Don't get me wrong. I would love to look great in a great suit and blah, blah, blah. I'm not sure you can do everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have to pick where our energy flows, that's where it is for you now. Yeah. So our last little fun segment that we do have, we call it the 10 in 2, and it's 10 questions in two minutes. So it's just really quick answers that are really fun. So first would be...
How do you define style? Well, I think that's something inherent rather than something learned in my experience. A trend you'd like to see disappear forever can be in any avenue. I don't know. Maybe photographs of food, maybe. I love that one. Three things you can't live without. Goodness me.
Love, love and love. How about that? I love that. Your current obsession. Well, my current obsession is my short film, I guess. Trying to work, trying to write this thing. But yeah, it's an obsession. Maybe a foolish one. Secret talent. My secret talent? I can cook, actually. I to during COVID. Me too. I love going to restaurants, but then we can go to restaurants, so I started to cook and actually...
I can cook now, so that's... And project cooking is what we had to look forward to. Yeah. It's like, what thing can I make from scratch? I know, yeah. So fun. How do you relax? Reading or a movie. Also, I'm a football fan. I like to watch Arsenal play. So yeah, those things. I like a glass of red wine too. So that's nice too. A cause that's important to you.
Gosh, can I say, you know, I just, I'm praying that Kamala Harris wins the election as a cause, but I'm keen on. Yes, I support that cause. What do you notice about someone when you first meet them? Hmm, trying to think. I guess, I guess one notices, you know, their charisma if they have one, you know. Yep, that energy, charisma. Yeah, that energy, yeah.
And then last two questions. What are you most excited about at this time in your life? I'm 59. I'm going to be 60 next month. I'm excited about this, the idea of making a film. once this film is kind of like on its feet, as it were, I'm excited to sort of like come back to photography and think about new images. Like I said before, the images are made very slowly.
They take a lot of time to, they have a long gestation period in my brain and then practically being made, they take a long time. So, you know, I'm more often not making pictures than making pictures. So yeah, you know, I'm interested to kind of like start that process again, but I'm not quite ready for it right now. We're excited to see when it happens. And then last one, what's your affirmation or mantra for today? Just to...
be in the moment and enjoying, you know, enjoying the process rather than thinking about what might be coming in the future. That's a good reminder for me. Thank you. yourself and with the city that I find myself in. Be where your feet are, right? Stay present. Very good. I love that. Thank you for that reminder and thank you so much for being our guest today. Is there anything that we can
offer our listeners who want to learn more or follow you? Well, I have a website, milesaldridge.com. I'm on Instagram. Also same name. And yeah, you know, I'm working on a couple of exhibition projects that will be happening early next year. Unfortunately, I can't talk about either of them because they're still quite early days and sort of confidential. But yeah, there are new shows planned for early 2025.
So we'll just all follow along and await those announcements. Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you so much, Miles. And we look forward to following your work and seeing all of the great creative collaborations and brain and everything that comes from your magic. OK, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Great to talk to
So there you have it. That was my conversation with Miles Aldridge, acclaimed artist and photographer from London. Hopefully the sounds of the rain singing to us in the background on a studio roof while we recorded didn't detract too much from the listening experience. If anything for me, it made me really miss London, my most favorite beautiful city in the entire world. This conversation really made me think about the nature of image and how important that is for the global communication.
I particularly loved what Miles had to say about his time working for Vogue Italia and how it was the most visually arresting print at the time because they knew that's what would garner them an international audience. Because people in England and America were never going to go to Vogue Italia for the news articles, Miles said, images don't need to be translated. Images don't need that language. And isn't that true? Our image, our clothes, what we wear, our styling, color, all of it, it's our global language.
It's the most direct form of communication. And did you guess Miles style personalities? Based on our conversation and how he spoke about his fashion choices, I would say he's a mix of polished classic and relaxed. There's an efficiency and a pragmatism to the way he dresses because it lets his brain focus on more creative pursuits. But there's also control and a sharpness to his choices. What do you think? Thanks so much for joining me on Wear Who You Are. Have you been checking out what else we've been up to?
Recently, I posted a long form article on LinkedIn. It's all about Michelle Obama's style evolution, how it's shifting and growing into this truly glorious magnetic era. This is a fabulous style evolution and a lot to be mined for the reader in terms of how to start dressing for yourself and also how to command a room and communicate that you have something important to say. And you do. I hope you give it a read. And that's it. I'll see you on the next Wear Who You Are. Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for joining another Wear Who You Are Wednesday. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. Be sure to follow along for episode news, updates, and other bonus style insights on Instagram through my business account at B .U. Style. That's the letters B, U, and style. Or my personal account at Natalie underscore Tinscher. And don't forget to subscribe to Wear Who You Are wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks again.
and see you next time.