Beauty, Glamour + Fashion


How Fashion Photographer Miles Aldridge Approaches His Ongoing Love Affair with Cinema

December 14, 2018

By Greer McNally

Miles Aldridge walks a line that divides several worlds—between fashion and art, between the real and the surreal, between fact and fiction. His photographs have graced the pages of Vogue Italia, hung on the walls at London’s Somerset House (for a major retrospective in 2013), and he has been admired at a mounting number of art fairs around the globe.

Bold, confrontational and hypnotic, there are recurring themes in his work. His subjects are nearly always women, they live in a hyper-colored universe, and they are alone when they claw at the walls, scream in frustration or blow dry their hair in their underwear. Massively impactful, each photograph grabs you by the throat and won’t let you go.

Short Breaths #1, 2012. © Miles Aldridge, image courtesy of Huxley-Parlour Gallery

Aldridge loves the freedom that photography gives him. “I actually think that photographs are more interesting when you don’t know what’s going on, which means that I have the luxury of it not having to make sense,” he says with a laugh.

But that doesn’t mean an enormous amount of planning doesn’t go into each shot. Every prop and ray of light is planned down to the last detail. He works everything out using storyboards, only finally picking up a camera when he is ready. “This idea of the photographer with a Nikon around his neck taking pictures constantly is not me,” he resolves. “I shoot very rarely and only when I’m ready with an idea.” The bulk of his days are, in fact, spent drawing and painting.

Where does the inspiration for these imaginary worlds come from? There are two clear influences: His childhood in London and the films he watched there, taking in triple bills at the local cinema to feed his fascination with the silver screen.

Chromo Thriller #3, 2012. © Miles Aldridge, image courtesy of Huxley-Parlour Gallery

Growing up, Aldridge wanted to be director. He tried his hand at music videos, each inspired by a film by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. (“They sucked really bad,” he asserts.) So, it comes as little surprise that his latest exhibition—a double-header with American photographer Todd Hido—looks at his relationship with the movies.

This Side of Paradise: Narrative, Cinema and Suburbia in the Works of Miles Aldridge and Todd Hido, showing at the Huxley-Parlour Gallery in London, is a genius collaboration, marrying Aldridge’s suspenseful inner world with Hido’s night-time suburbia of quiet houses and empty streets.

It seems like a natural pairing on the walls of the gallery, but on paper, it wasn’t so obvious. “The exhibition was the brain child of Giles Huxley-Parlour,” the gallery’s owner, Aldridge explains. “He called me and said, ‘You might think it’s stupid, but I want to share an idea with you.’”

They started to play around with pairing the images and saw how together, the works by the two photographers created a highly cinematic atmosphere of dread. “I mean they feel more cinematic than most movies, in the way that you have this incredible establishing shot with Todd’s exterior, which then cuts to a closeup of a woman screaming or rolling on the floor,” Aldridge notes.

Actress #6, 2012. © Miles Aldridge, image courtesy of Huxley-Parlour Gallery

Amidst all of the high drama and dread, the lack of a male presence is hardly noticed. This is a women-only world, and it’s glorious. But where are all the men? “Actually,” he admits, “I don’t know.” But there may be several factors at play. “I find that I’m influenced by the Hollywood closeup. Think about those old movies—how many scenes would Elizabeth Taylor have been in on her own? To me, that was the majority of the film.”

Aldridge likes a solo subject for another reason: “Inevitably, when you look at two people, you often have one who seems to own the picture and the other one, by default, seems to be second best. I try to have the best colors, the best textures, the best lights, and it always comes down to one star.”

It’s all about getting your full attention for Aldridge—drawing you into his world invented in his head and created by his camera.

He’s found himself thinking about this more and more as he contemplates future projects. “I had a conversation with [German photographer] Thomas Ruff, and he pointed out that it’s actually the pictures that we don’t take that are the most interesting,” Aldridge muses. “You choose not to photograph light falling on a tree, or a child feeding a kitten a bowl of milk, because the job of the artist photographer is to use your tools to cleverly, wittily, playfully, provocatively, emotionally play with those elements to create something that reenergizes the viewer and returns them back to life all excited.”

This Side of Paradise: Narrative, Cinema and Suburbia in the Works of Miles Aldridge and Todd Hido is showing at the Huxley-Parlour Gallery in London until December 15.

Greer McNally is a freelance writer and photographer who inherited her love of photography from her dad. She’s talked ex-wives with Don McCullin and cat photos with Rankin.

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