Celebrated fashion and celebrity photographer Albert Watson exhibits at SCAD FASH

When he later looked at the clock, almost two hours had passed, and because he hadn’t been checking in on the makeup artist, when Kidman was presented to him she was entombed in heavy makeup that made her almost unrecognizable.

“Let’s put it this way; it was not a success. The shoot went down in history as the only shot in my 50 years of photography that was never used.”

It was a minor snafu in a career more often defined by remarkable success: over 100 Vogue magazine covers and subjects ranging from his first celebrity portrait, of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, to celebrities like Michael Jackson, Uma Thurman and captains of industry like Steve Jobs.

Credit: Albert Watson

Credit: Albert Watson

His illustrious career is documented in the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film exhibition “The Light Behind the Lens,” up through Sept. 5, which features more than 50 photographs taken by the Scottish-born photographer.

Like Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, Watson’s work exceeded the limitations of fashion or celebrity photography.

For Watson that was a very conscious choice.

“I began to realize as I looked over my career in the ’70s that I was a pretty good fashion photographer. I was working all the time, making a lot of money. I was pretty successful.”

Credit: Gloria Rodriguez

Credit: Gloria Rodriguez

But, he says, “the strange words that are associated with art: longevity, immortality, staying power, you know, those words began to haunt me in a big way.”

And so he pivoted, leaning into a rich visual vocabulary he had honed over the years and channeling photography greats like Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Jacques Henri Lartigue and bubbling up the lessons of world cinema to create his own singular visual lexicon.

Much of his drive developed while studying film at the Royal College of Art in London where his classmates included filmmaker Tony Scott, production designer Allan Cameron and design firm Hipgnosis founder Storm Thorgerson who created iconic album covers for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

The competition was fierce, says Watson. “Everybody wanted to do better than everybody else.”

The experience turned him into a huge film fan to this day, who educated his eye watching classics like “Bicycle Thieves,” “Citizen Kane” and “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.”

But he laments how little today’s photographers have by way of cultural education and preparation.

“I’m a little bit critical of younger photographers, where all of that stuff is available to them,” Watson says, with a click of their computer mouse. But the interest isn’t there, he says.

“These people have never heard of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,” laments Watson.

“I meet young people today, and they don’t know the songs of the Rolling Stones. That’s shocking to me.”

For Watson, education in all things is the key. Watson credits his success to his obsession with learning as much about his subjects as he possibly can before he takes their picture.

“It’s preparation, preparation, preparation,” says Watson. “And you have to be careful when you give this advice to photographers, right? Because they think preparation is making sure you’ve got your tripod.”

“It’s a given that you prepare the equipment. So the preparation applies to your research and thinking about how you’re going to behave with that person.”

EXHIBIT

“Albert Watson: The Light Behind the Lens”

Through Sept. 5, 2021. Thursdays-Saturdays 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sundays noon-5 p.m., $10 general admission, $8 seniors/military; $20 family (three or more); $5 college students with ID and SCAD alumni; free for children under 14, SCAD students, faculty and staff and members. SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film, 1600 Peachtree Street NW, Atlanta. 404-253-3132, scadfash.org