‘Photography legitimised a need to travel,’ explains photographer Kate Friend. At 18 years old, she left the UK for Mongolia. Soon after that, she based herself in China, living in Beijing and travelling to all corners to build a portfolio. ‘I had a stab at shooting documentary work but realised quickly that the glory days of that were long gone so starting shooting commercial assignments. I took any job that came with a plane ticket.
The artist teamed up with Sussex-based nursery McBean’s Orchids for her latest series on flowers, capturing spellbinding images of exotic orchids in full bloom. Friend’s process is ‘minimal, in all aspects’. Working purely with natural light and a medium-format camera, she shoots entirely on location although her images might suggest otherwise. ‘The flowers are isolated and spare, usually a stem or two, never a bunch. I don’t like a crowd,’ she notes.
And while her photographic career has taken a turn from fashion , flowers – like people, as it turns out – have their own quirks as ‘sitters’. ‘Portraiture is about performance, on the part of the sitter and also on the part of the photographer. You want to extract from your sitter something nuanced, something “real”. It’s all a game; a dance with your sitter,’ muses Friend. ‘Still life has pressures too but they’re not human, so you can work in your head without needing to communicate.
Please keep me up to date with special offers and news just by email from carefully selected companies. Your personal details will not be shared with those companies - we send the emails and you can unsubscribe at any time.