I’ve actually agonised quite a lot as to whether I should write this blog entry because the last thing I want to do is criticise how people make their living (particularly photographers and chefs!). Sponsorship is an accepted reality for anyone in the media spotlight, not just for celebrity chefs. However, some recently launched ad campaigns featuring Marco Pierre White has really got me thinking about how pictures can be taken out of context years later.

In a previous lifetime, I was extremely fortunate enough to meet, and spend a half day, in the studio of photographer Bob Carlos Clarke. Bob was looking for some sponsorship support for an upcoming exhibition. That single day stands out as one of the most amazing of my working life, Bob’s absolute, and I mean absolute, passion to the artistic integrity of what he did was mesmerising. And I can genuinely say, with no intentional pretentiousness, that that meeting, and his work, had a profound effect on what I now do now. During the course of our meeting, the conversation turned to how a household name photographer had “sold out” by endorsing, shall we say less reputable photo technology, (for those of you old enough to remember, there was a big TV campaign at the time) and Bob was so visibly distressed by this concept, that the industry (which was then in it’s very early stages of digital) could sell out in such way. I remember being quite taken aback at the voracity of his response.

Bob’s book “White Heat” about Marco Pierre White is one I frequently cite as being the starting point of my inspiration. Having done a number of photo shoots in working kitchens myself, the gritty intensity, heat, rush, buzz, adrenalin is so wonderfully captured by him, and to my mind spills out of the book. And it’s tandemed by visually capturing the ferocity and intensity of the young Marco Pierre White. I have never personally met Marco, but judging by Bob’s pictures, I’m pretty sure that they were kindred spirits.

As a commercial photographer (and a marketeer), I genuinely believe every commissioned picture should have a purpose, as the opening page of my website says “a picture speaks a thousand words”. For me, I explore artistic interpretation in my personal projects, but when you are shooting for a client the commercial brief always needs to be met. Today I received this sponsored marketing message which tipped me over the edge in favour of writing this blog entry.

I’m pretty sure that these pictures weren’t used without licence for such a high profile marketing campaign, but I can’t help wondering what Bob Carlos Clarke would have thought. For me, seeing one of his most iconic pictures with a commercial logo on it, made me feel very sad.