Dracula – Nina’s revenge

I’ve been working with theatre companies for many years and I always enjoy the challenge of creating something new. Theatre allows a degree of creativity that’s not so common in some of my other more commercial work and suits my vision to a tee.

Creating a teaser image for the National Theatre’s production of Dracula had one big challenge. As is often the case with theatre projects early on, the main character wasn’t cast but we still needed an image. So how to show a character without showing who it was? A lot of options we looked at involved casting shadows or using movement but all of them I felt would give a rather vague and weak image. Then I remembered a personal series of images I shot 2 years ago using fine plastic sheeting. I showed these to the theatre and the director liked the route. We then looked at a means to suggest a bat and found a library image of one that’s backlit and shows the wings in a beautiful way. I combined the two and cast overlay are colour to add a sense of drama to the image and we found our final shot.

I make this process all sound quite straight forward but it wasn’t and never is. There’s a lot of stumbling around in the dark and worry. I know that that the stumbling around is an essential part of the process but I struggle with the fact that I do find that part stressful. Usually the more stressful and stumbling around I have to do to get there, the better the final image. if only I could get there without all the worry and stress, after all it always works out and that worry is for nothing. This is one of the reasons I speak to students and tell them to face their fears and not be put off by them, it’s a normal part of the creative process. After all these years I still struggle with the stress of it all but recognise it doesn’t mean I can’t do it. I think a lot of the benefits in our lives come when we face our fears and push against that. that’s how we grow.

Midway through the pandemic I was commissioned by Edinburgh University to make a series of portraits of 13 individuals that work in or with the university. Each of them was chosen to represent the broad range of people at the university who in one way or another are playing their part to help combat the virus. Their roles are diverse from stores manager to government advisor to intensive care consultant.

After some test shooting and much discussion on safety between myself and the university co-ordinators Jen Durkin and Jen Middleton we established a straightforward style that seemed to fit the subject.

I photographed each of them individually in my studio, a bit of a challenge when we had to stay well apart. Trying to relax your subject and adjust a camera is not so easy when your mask is steaming up your glasses and muffling your words. Despite these inconveniences the project was hugely rewarding creatively as well as a being an interesting window into each of their worlds. In the course of shooting I received several personalised mini TED talks on what they were working on. The biggest thing I learned from talking to them is that despite their best efforts just how hard it is to know what the future holds when you’re dealing with a pathogen that’s so new without years worth of data to analyse.

Large scale prints have been produced of some of the images. These are hung at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh inside the Chancellor’s building foyer. The full collection is to be displayed in the Elsie Ingles lounge soon. You can see all the portraits and read more about each of the subjects on the university blog here.