Andrew Catlin


Andrew Catlin is an English photographer, artist, director, cinematographer and filmmaker. His work has been widely published, and is included in numerous collections, books, exhibitions and archives.

History

Catlin grew up equally intrigued by both arts and science. His father was a drama producer at the BBC, his mother a senior staff member at the Royal College of Art. His childhood was spent in London in the 1960s, during a time of great political and social change.
In 1978, he was awarded the Prince Philip Prize for Zoology by the Zoological Society of London for a research project completed while at school. After attending University College School in London, he continued his studies with a psychology degree at Durham University before returning to London to do a research degree in Learning and Development at University College London.
During this time he also developed his growing interest in photography. Early work for NME, Melody Maker, Smash Hits, and Spin quickly extended to other publications, and commissions from record companies, musicians, designers and artists internationally. His work appeared on numerous record sleeves, books and magazine covers. He was one of the photographers chosen to document the Live Aid concert in 1985 and was the largest single contributor to the subsequent exhibition and book.
During the 1980s he began directing music videos. During a visit to Japan while working with Bryan Adams, he was experimenting with a Super-8 movie camera, when Adams asked if he would film one of his live songs. The stark black and white clip that followed was reviewed by Chrissy Iley in Direction Magazine as a great debut. His second video, for the Cowboy Junkies track, Blue Moon was given a feature in Direction: "Blue Moon surprised me, impressed me, and I'm hard to impress, especially with performance videos. Its approach is not clinical or technical or corporate. But its flickered lights and sepia faces strike a mood that few directors of the three-minute clip even bother to think necessary. The facial expressions are important to him, and are carefully monitored with his portraiture eye. Fortunately, MTV shared my view and put it on heavy rotation.". Again self-taught, Catlin built on this early experience to create numerous music videos and films in the role of director or director of photography, and sometimes both.
Catlin was Director of Photography for Elements of Mine, a film by Egyptian Director Khaled El Hagar which was awarded First Prize in the Toronto Moving Pictures Festival.
He had long standing working relationships and collaborations with Simon Hilton, Stefania Malmsten, Seamus McGarvey, Susanne Freytag, Carole Morin, Propaganda, New Order, Bryan Adams, Jesus and Mary Chain, Joan Armatrading, Paul Davis, Blacks Club, Ian McCulloch, Tim Soar, Danny Pope, Susheela Raman, WOMAD, The Pogues, Shane MacGowan, Primal Scream, 23 Skidoo, Last Few Days, The Sugarcubes, The Pixies, Tanya Donnelly.
In recent years, drawing together experience from photography, filmmaking and graphic design, he began a project called "The Matrix Series", exploring graphic compositions with complex multi-frame narratives. Each piece was shot as a set of images designed to interact in multiple dimensions, combining elements of time, movement, rhythm, narrative and graphic structure, while remaining within an essentially documentary framework. One of the first collectors to acquire a print was fashion designer Paul Smith for his HQ shop in London's Floral Street. In his essay, “Nine Hastings Photographers” Vasileios Kantas proposes that "Andrew Catlin’s imagery formations could be considered as a study on perception. His matrix suggests a unique syntax, of which the visual elements have been formed partly coincidentally - the subject’s actions - and partly in a controllable way - the photographer’s decisions. The way the sub-frames are selected and positioned in the matrix is preconceived, though it does not serve the linearity of time which seems to be loosened, if not abolished. The display of the sub-frames allows different reading strategies, seemingly serving many goals simultaneously." Sean O'Hagan, photography writer for The Observer, notes "In his Matrix series, he has somehow merged the rigorously formal with the luminously observational. Whereas the likes of Blossfeldt and the Bechers created visual typologies, arranging plants and industrial water towers respectively in grids that echo the natural and man-made sameness of their subjects, Catlin has used the grid format to render a series of what he calls “critical” moments. The resulting images are both formally detached and acutely observational, ordered yet intimate. Their intimacy is amplified by the cumulative power of each arrangement of critical moments into a matrix of observation"..."The Matrix Series explores rhythm, space and time to provide a unique way to see.” elaborates Catlin, “Each is a collection of moments, separately composed but directly connected.” The notion of rhythm is, I think, crucially important here. A rhythm, is a way of measuring time in music, and there is something musical in these matrixes, a minimalist set of repetitions and variations that Steve Reich or Philip Glass might instinctively recognise. He has created something both hybrid and singular: time suspended, time passing, time measured in still, unfolding moments. Time arranged in mathematical rhythm, in musical sequence, in critical moments. Andrew Catlin is a photographer with a scientific eye. He is obsessive, meticulous and rigorous, but also a quiet, unobtrusive observer of the everyday sublime. It shines brightly though his big pictures."
Current projects include photography, music videos and documentaries, art direction, films, exhibitions and books. Catlin maintains an eclectic involvement in photography, film, video, education, art direction, directorships, music, internet and art.
Catlin was quoted on photography in Varsity Magazine:
"For me a great photograph needs to have a sense of intrigue. There needs to be a reason to revisit it again and again. Unanswered questions that make further exploration of the image an imperative. Reinterpretation through imagination, consideration and connection. If a picture doesn't have the depth to engage in these ways – if it doesn't make you think and reflect – it may have great visual or emotional impact, but it is superficial.
"A photographer must first see. An act of observation, study and recognition. Second, record. The act of composition, a feeling for light, interpretation. Thirdly, reflect. Consider in more depth the meaning of the image. Edit from a sequence; perhaps change the colour, density, contrast or light in the picture to adjust balance, weight and emphasis within the frame. Some photographers crop, others never do as a matter of principle.
"It doesn't matter. You must arrive at an image you continue to learn from long after it was taken. Something that draws you in and allows you to explore the dynamics of the situation you reacted to and recorded, perhaps quite instinctively, in greater depth.
'The contemplation of things as they are is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.' "
His photography is held in major collections and archives worldwide, including The National Portrait Gallery in London and the Schwules Museum in Berlin.

Selected exhibitions and collections

Selected music videos: director of photography credits