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We are very thankful to both Sabah Ingvarsson and Miles Standish for having agreed to participate in this feature and hope that future collaborations with Wally De Backer and other artists will take place. 
 
 
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Gotyepedia>Gotye & The Arts>Photography

We met Miles Standish through Sabah Ingvarsson, who used Wally as a canvas in her Tethered artwork. While he devotes most of his time working as a lawyer and being a father, photography also plays an important role in his life. In this Q&A, Miles tells us about his side-project as a photographer, how he got to know Sabah Ingvarsson and what his experience working with Wally De Backer was like. 
 
GOTYETTES: Tell us a little about your photographic career. Do you have an all-time favourite image that you've taken?
 
MILES STANDISH:  I was captivated by photographing people from a young age.  I was given my first camera at the age of 7 (I have just turned 50).  I can still remember getting the first roll of film back from the chemist and the electric thrill I felt at seeing the few decent images. 

I studied photography at art school in the mid 80s.  My photographic heroes were Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Robert Mapplethorpe.  I dropped out of art school with some health issues before finishing my degree and, sadly, I stopped taking photographs for many years.  I became a lawyer, but always felt that something crucial was missing – like a phantom limb, if you like. 

 

In 2006 I started taking pictures again, and the magic and passion returned instantly.  In 2008 I had a solo show of a project where I rephotographed the subjects of my art school portraits.  It was an amazing experience that confirmed for me what I should be doing with my life.  In 2010 I quit full-time lawyering and became a freelance portrait photographer, and a freelance lawyer running my own small practice.

 

Many of my images are significant to me for different reasons (see below). It was a great thrill to be selected as a finalist in the 2011 National Photographic Portrait Prize, and to have my image hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, so my portrait of Fiona Scott-Norman is very special to me.  This family portrait of some dear friends was taken as I was first returning to serious photography in 2007, and is also very special to me.  But if I had to choose, maybe this Polaroid portrait of my wife, Melissa.

 

 

    Miles Standish

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G.: How did you first meet Sabah and what was it like to work with her? 
M. S.:  I met Sabah on Twitter a couple of years ago.  I think she had admired Fiona Scott-Norman’s profile image and Fiona tagged me in her reply.  We quickly struck up a Twitter friendship and it was wonderful to finally meet her in person and introduce her to my family earlier this year.  I find her work very beautiful and intriguing.  She is technically extremely skillful, but also invests her work with great passion (or heart!).  It was really fantastic to have this opportunity to be involved in her collaboration with Wally.
 
G.: What were you impressions when you met Wally? 
M. S.:  I had not met Wally before, but I was aware of his reputation as a lovely guy: sincere, authentic and gentle. He lived up to that reputation, but also impressed me with his quick wit and patience. 
 
G.: What was he like as a photographic model? 
M. S.: Wally seems very comfortable in his own skin – he was very engaged in the process and had just the right (and, very rare) balance of unselfconscious relaxedness with physical tension.  All in all, he was a really terrific model.  I would love to work with him again!
 
 
G.: Which of your images of Wally's do you like the most and why? 
M. S.:  Of the images Sabah has chosen to use, I think my favourite is Tethered V.  I find Wally’s gaze very arresting and somewhat ambiguous in this image.  It almost evokes religious iconography, which I think is interesting.  Sabah’s crop is much more radical than I would ordinarily consider for one of my images, but really adds tension to the image – this is one of the great things about an artistic collaboration: your collaborator can show you a new way of looking at your own work.

G.: Were there any difficulties with the shoot or dealing with the images?
M. S.: The room where we worked was a little cramped, and I was just working with window light, so there were a few technical challenges, but really it was very smooth.  I was a little anxious, waiting to hear if Sabah liked the images, as I didn’t want to let her down – she wasn’t going to get another chance to do this again in a hurry, after all! – and I was just delighted when I got her feedback.  All round, it was a lovely experience.
 
 

N.B.: All photos on this site are copyrighted, and cannot be used without permission.

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