The directors: Rankin

The photographer Rankin‘s first feature film is ’The Lives of the Saints‘, a mystical fable set in north London‘s Green Lanes, which he co-directed with Chris Cottam. Rankin, 40, previously made the short film, ’Perfect‘, is the publisher of Dazed & Confused magazine and has photographed personalities ranging from the Queen to the Spice Girls. He lives in Kings Cross.

As a photographer, it took me a long time to realise what ‘lies’ photographs are. You cannot assume that a photograph hasn’t been created in one way or another. So it’s the truth within the lie that I’m always searching for. I try to portray what I see in front of me in the most honest way. But you still use tricks. And I think that’s the difference between being a really great photographer and a good photographer: anyone can be a good photographer, but being a great photographer you see the world in a very specific way. You see people in a specific way.

If I meet someone, I can summarise what I think of them within an image fairly quickly. I always go with my gut instinct, I don’t have to analyse them...

I always find it difficult to explain what I do as a photographer. For me, it’s a quite shallow business anyway, so to give it any greater meaning than it’s just me putting it together feels a little bit like I’m showing off. And also, it’s like anything that you're good at: you are nervous of trying to explain it or to analyse it because you might lose it.

My approach to directing and photography is to prepare as much as I can. With photographs, you don’t have all those technical issues and problems that you have with filmmaking. You don’t have to get an entire scene from an actor. In photography, you only have to get one second, or one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second.

Directing is a very, very lonely profession, so I was glad to co-direct my first film. I always wanted to be a collaborator. I’ve done magazines with other people, I’ve done books with other people, I’ve always wanted to work with somebody else. Chris [Cottam] and I have argued since the film was finished and we argued before but during the film we didn’t argue at all.

When filming, Chris and I would take ten seconds away to discuss things, to make decisions. But a lot of the time we didn’t even need ten seconds. A lot of the time it’s about taste. Everything that you create is a matter of taste. And I think if our tastes were different then we would conflict, but our tastes are very similar.

I hated all the post-production, apart from the editing. I loved the editing but all the rest I hated; nearly every single minute of it. I wanted to kill our sound designer by the end. I loved him but you would give him comments, go away and come back three days later and none of the comments would have been taken on board. It wouldn’t have moved on, which I found incredibly frustrating. I found a lot of it quite tedious.

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