“Everyone’s got insecurities”: An exclusive interview with photographer Rankin

Rankin is the least celebrity ‘celebrity photographer’ I’ve ever met. Perhaps he has mellowed with age, perhaps it's the therapy, but he’s decidedly ‘chill’ for someone who has just stepped off a plane and landed directly into a pack of waiting press. Slipping seamlessly into the crowd at Picture This Gallery in Stockholm’s Södermalm, he easily passes (all too convincingly, actually) for a fellow Scandi – decked out in his classic uniform of head-to-toe black, with a loose, oversized shirt and sneakers.

It’s a far cry from his rowdy image of yesteryear. From the sounds of things, Rankin has grown up and has been doing some soul searching. But for someone who has shot countless famous faces – The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Kate Moss, to name a few – his contacts book remains slim. He says he doesn’t have Madonna on speed dial, instead, these days he prefers the company of his dog, and plants. Though, having spent over three decades with a ring-side seat at the circus called 'celebrity', he must have seen (and learnt) an awful lot.

“Famous people, a lot of the time, are in a bubble – without question. And that's what you assume when they're coming to a shoot… I photographed Selma Hayek the other day and she's the exact opposite. She's super down to earth. And you're like, ‘Wow, how did you survive all of that?’”

Always inquisitive, and constantly searching, Rankin, by his own admission, was “naive” when he first picked up a camera. But still, even back then he had two stipulations for his career: a focus on social justice, and, er, to be rich. At first glance, documentary seemed the logical step, but his secondary want would have proved a lot harder to fulfil if he had. Ultimately, it was photography’s ability to truly connect which drove him.

“I got really seduced by the relationship you would build with people. And also, I'm just super nosy; I'm really inquisitive about people. I love asking questions, so it kind of all just seemed to make sense,” he says.

And drive him it did. By his own admission, Rankin is a workaholic. “I shot every day, probably six days a week for a good 15, 20 years,” he explains. But for a man who has spent most of everyday for the past 30 years on set, surrounded by supermodels and stylists, shooting for some of the world’s biggest magazines, he has always remained pretty uncomfortable with the fashion world. The clue was in the name of his self-critically titled 2018 book Unfashionable: 30 Years Of Fashion Photography. Always feeling like a fish out of water in fashion circles, Rankin thinks of himself as being very much part of the ‘out’ crowd. Not quite cool enough. Not quite thin enough. “Even back then, when I was probably a bit skinnier and better looking, I never felt comfortable,” he says. “And I set up Dazed and Confused specifically because of that, because I wanted to own my own thing.”

If he did have to go to fashion week parties, then the best way to silence the inner critic was simple: get drunk. “I don't like those parties. I just don't like it. I used to [get] kind of really drunk at those parties because I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ It's so weird to me.” So he fell out of love with fashion for a few years. But his saving grace came when he stopped taking it all too seriously – that’s when the good times really started. “It took me years to realise that if you get into fashion, you've got to be absolutely obsessive about it. And then when I realised that, I stopped doing it for a few years. And then got back into it for fun; the minute I started doing that, I started to enjoy it – I wasn't competing with anyone.”

But competition can sometimes be healthy. Constantly questioning himself helps him stay on top of his game, all these years later. And he’s clearly still a perfectionist about each and every single one of his shots, staring intently at the roster of ‘best of’ that we’re surrounded by today. “I can go round and tell you what's wrong with every one of these pictures,” he says. Is that what you see when you walk in then, I ask. “Yeah, I walked straight up to one and I'm still annoyed that I got the hair wrong on that shot.”

Perhaps this extreme level of perfectionism is how he went from Glasgow to standing in Buckingham Palace, camera in hand, attempting to get a laugh out of the Queen. (He managed it). Growing up, none of Rankin’s family were ‘in the arts’. In fact, the closest connection he had to that world was that his aunt worked in a gallery, albeit in the accounts department. So where were all the creatives he could try and emulate? “There weren't any,” he explains. But what there was was conviction – bucket loads. "I think the thing my parents gave me was a real belief in my own opinion… Your opinion is your opinion. It's super valid and don't let anyone tell you it isn't,” he says.

“My favourite word when I was a kid was 'why' and my parents would always try and answer that. And that kind of approach was something they really encouraged, and if they hadn't, I would probably not be a photographer,” Rankin says.

But it is not always the brightest stars that have attracted Rankin’s focus and lens. In fact, he prefers to snap members of the public, namely at Rankin Live, where he once shot around 2,000 people in the space of about three months. “It's not that I'm a genius at it, it's like, I fucking trained for the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. I just kept doing it and doing it.”

And seeing face after face, after face, he came to realise a few things. Life in the gilded cage of fame is certainly a bizarre thing, but one thing us and them do share, Rankin says, is insecurities. We all have our own. And they’re inescapable when you’re staring down a camera lens. “The difference between her [gesturing to the blown-up face of Natalie Imbruglia hovering on the wall next to us] and say, a member of the public isn't really that much. It's like she wants to feel great when she's being photographed. Because she's a celebrity, even back then, she's got insecurities. Everyone’s got insecurities.”