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The English move effortlessly between commercial and fine-art sensibilities. Her latest book, Clad, is the first wholly dedicated to her fashion photography
The photographer’s latest book, Clad, is the first wholly dedicated to her fashion photography, with images of Cate Blanchett, Kim Kardashian, Olivia Colman and morerowing up in Nottingham, Jackie Nickerson at 13 was given a Kodak Instamatic by her mother, “and that was it – I Ioved that sound of the click, click”, the acclaimed photographer recalls with a smile when we meet at her home overlooking the sea in Co Louth, where she lives with her husband, the graphic artist Kevin Gurry.
A conceptual documentary photographer, Nickerson is known for portraiture, and her interest in environment, identity and materiality. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Vatican Museums in Rome and the National Gallery of Ireland. She has also published many books of photography.
They include ones documenting landscape and farm labourers in Africa , religious communities in Ireland , modern consumerism and commodification , salvaged content from studio portraiture and a visual diary of a decade living and working across the US . Most of her training came when she moved to New York at the age of 18.
Her father was American and she was born in Boston, so she holds a US passport. In New York she spent five years working with still-life photographers, snapping everything from washing machines to jewellery.
“That was my education. Technically it was a dream. ” Having forged a successful career doing catalogues for high-profile clients such as Macy’s and J Crew, she returned to London in the early 1990s “because my heart wasn’t in it”. She left fashion for 10 years, spent time in Africa and, after her marriage, moved to Ireland.
The success of Farm and its influence reignited her career in fashion photography. Roisin Kiberd: ‘Beauty is a very weighty subject ... it can be cruel and manipulative but it can also be art’Some influences have been formative. Time magazine sent her to Liberia during an Ebola crisis, when people were completely covered in protective clothing, which got her thinking about the nature of plague, isolation and when materials protect but also obscure identity.
Her latest book, Clad, is the first wholly dedicated to her fashion photography and distinctive, feminist vision, anti-commercial stance and conviction that dressing and dressing up are less about clothes and more about the selves they help us to discover. She has worked with many of the world’s leading celebrities and luxury brands and magazines, including Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Dior, Vogue, Vanity Fair and W. Her many clients include Kanye West – she collaborated for eight years on his Jeezy brand – and West’s former wife, Kim Kardashian, with whom she still loves to work on various projects, most recently in Chile.
Nickerson is warm and welcoming, and she says modestly that her success is “a kind of accident, a kind of fluke”.
“Somebody showed Farm to Dries Van Noten, and so many people responded to that book,” she says, including the celebrated British designer Kim Jones, who was then working at Louis Vuitton as head of menswear. He told her that he used her book for his degree at Central St Martins, so it had a real impact on his creativity.
Clad contains some 400 images, many from editorial fashion shoots, some portraits, some conceptual, many showing Nickerson’s exceptional compositional skills and interest in clothing, textures and locations. They range from a glorious model with waist-length white hair spread across a white horse, to one of actor Cate Blanchett laughing, completely enveloped in brown paper.
There are several powerful images of Kim Kardashian looking majestic, along with a famous portrait of Anok Yai, then an unknown US model shot in Morocco for a cover of AnOther magazine. There’s Olivia Colman dressed effortlessly in oversize menswear, and some startling pictures of feathered heads. The images speak for themselves, as none are captioned.
The back of the book contains a list of thanks to almost 2,000 people, showing the breadth and scale of her work and associations. She is clear about the difference between commercial and editorial work and working with celebrities. Dealing with the latter, she says simply that “you keep your head down and just go and do your job.
You become an invisible presence,” though she adds that Kanye West was a “brilliant producer and director – he chooses people and then lets them get on with it. As a creative person, it was a dream. ” She is also full of praise for Paris-based French stylist Charlotte Collet, “who comes with her own ideas and vision of what fashion should look like. I love designers and creative people who have found their own vision in their own way.
” When it comes to models, she looks for star power.
“It is something you either have or you don’t have. It manifests itself by being able to capture your attention, and someone who is not afraid of the camera. ” Often people who are photographed a lot are open to doing unusual, “crazy” stuff, she says.
“If you are doing a commercial job that has a specific end use, what the brand is trying to project, then it’s my job to work with the client and a team of people to realise that. Sometimes you have a brief where you don’t have a lot of leeway; then there is editorial that is perhaps about sustainable fashion and you can do whatever you want and think about environment, so you can do something exciting and forward-thinking.
My job is to inspire and to start a conversation about things. ” She loves portraits.
“I love the challenge because it is a difficult process. Fashion work has an end use, whereas with artwork, which takes time, you have to do something true to yourself and that is difficult and emotional,” she says.
“Creative people push themselves, push boundaries, and you are testing yourself all the time. ” One image in Clad features a face obscured by a yellow circle. Dating from 2020, it was a homage to the late conceptual American artist John Baldessari, who applied colourful dots to appropriated photographs. As one of more than 30 well-known creatives asked by Vogue for their reaction to the Covid pandemic – Creativity in a Time of Crisis – this was her response.
Her working tools are a Mammiya 67 camera and a Canon, having started with second-hand Rolleiflex and Hasselblads.
“But I don’t get caught up in technique. You have to be free and find the equipment that works for you and that helps you tell the story of what you see. ” Downstairs in the house is a huge archive of her work, along with a collection of plastics, garden mesh and other accoutrements for her work. She is full of praise for the new generation of Irish fashion designers.
“It is amazing how they are now punching above their weight. ” Her images forare particularly memorable. Clad “is my vision of fashion. This is a huge, happy memory and here are all the brilliant people I have worked with.
” She is a firm believer in the power of books, and is completing another personal project, Assembly, three books in a box that marks 20 years of fine art work. Another fashion book is in the offing.
Roisin Kiberd: ‘Beauty is a very weighty subject ... it can be cruel and manipulative but it can also be art’Actor Olwen Fouéré: ‘I firmly believe we are in the last days of the Anthropocene’Van Morrison at Electric Picnic: Not quite an old snuggly blanket, but when he’s this good he’s wonderful A Wicklow woman in Marbella: ‘I would make friends in the summer and they would then go home. But I found my tribe’State-backed lender asked to examine loan schemes for medical graduates and electric vehiclesRTÉ veers off track while heavens open, as TG4 goes big for weed-watching at the AvivaKen Early: Premier League’s financial dominance not enough to lure European elites
Cate-Blanchett Kanye-West Kim-Kardashian Simone-Rocha Olivia-Colman
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