London-based Australian photographer David Standish lists his greatest influences as beauty, mystery, magic, dreams, chance, co-incidence and change. His dreamlike photos are filled with muted colour and imagery.

Images

Q&A

Name: David Standish
Year of Birth: 1978
Nationality: Australian
Based In: London
Website: www.davidstandish.com

How would you describe your style?
It’s a difficult answer to put in words, I use pictures to describe those words! It’s a representation of me and it continually evolves. It’s painted with a fascination for looking below the surface, a love for exploring and defining this illusive world in my own way, and an awe of the singular beauty of a woman. It’s interpreted with memory and experience, sampled with dreams, and open to a bit of idealization. I’d like to think of it as realism on a dreamwalk with idealism, but sometimes it’s more of a rigged fight to the death between the two. It all revolves around beauty and strangeness.

What do you think is your best work so far?
I like the swans story as it attempts to communicate the idea “…everywhere you go, there you are…” It’s a collaboration with chance and coincidence. One that laid a path to some amazing sights, and to work with some very talented people. I’m also happy with the Mask story with Maryna Linchuck. It’s about real beauty being hidden behind a mask. It’s about being who you really are. It’s just the beginning, the best is yet to come…

Three people you would love to work with:
Passionate, exciting, unquenchable people who want to make a difference. A combination of those please!

Who do you think is one to watch?
Producer Bejou Baile de Laperriere, stylist Laura Michael, director Xavier Chassing.

Influences

Inspiration comes from all things and all places. My greatest influences are beauty, mystery, magic, dreams, chance, co-incidence and change. These are the things that I’m attracted to, compelled by, and at times fated to meet. Everything below is related by these in one or more ways.

Family & Friends – Every time I close my eyes they are there with everything they’ve ever taught and shown me, and every picture I take reflects a piece of them. I fell in love with my muse, she’s also a great photographer and an equal part of this dream of ours. We now have a baby which is a HUGE influence.

Childhood – As a boy, home was a small farm in Western Australia. It was a magical place enveloped in a vast blue sky, an epic sense of freedom, but at the same time an underlying sense of forebode. It wasn’t far from the city, but there was a certain wildness about it. I used to play in the bush and pine forests surrounding us and you could walk all day and not see a person. It was like a forbidden forest… The trees were so tall that it was dark and the wind whistled hauntingly through them. There were tales of people dying there, and poisonous snakes and spiders were hidden in vivid wildflowers while brightly coloured birds danced around them. It was beauty, danger and tragedy. That wildness is so natural it’s almost supernatural and it’s very much a part of me.

London – It’s an amazing place filled with creative and inspiring history and people. The chaos of a big city is another kind of wildness and the history is beautiful but has tragedy in it’s mix. So it’s like coming home… in another dimension… or something. Needless to say, moving here bought about a massive transformation.

Family photos – My Granddad was a photographer, his black and white photos of his home in Europe were of a world I could only dream of. He liked to shoot polaroids so our family albums were filled with them. I have the same feelings when I see the muted colours of polaroids shot today. He has since passed on and today I use his cameras. The photos of mum and dad in the 60′s and 70′s were my first image of cool and have left an indelible image on my mind.

Edgar Allan Poe – for the quote – “… There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion…”

Music – It’s a mix of sounds spanning time and genre that I love. Some of the most influential have been: Nirvana, The White Stripes, Joy Division, Led Zeppelin, New Order, Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, David Bowie,The Jesus & Mary Chain, Iggy Pop, Bridez, Justice, Erol Alkan, Boys Noize, classical and, of course, Sinatra! I love to make music and mix too, it’s all part of the process.

Artists – Picasso for his vision, Degas for his dark beauty, Dali for introducing me to the surreal, Balthus for his surreal figurative work, Warhol for his pop vision of mortality and Caravaggio & Honthorst for the chiaroscuro.

Film – Frederico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrik, Ridley Scott, Ed Wood

Author – Charles Bukowski: Simple concise words with deep and vivid communication. Reading his books is a masterclass in simplicity.

Author – Carlos Castenaeda: For daring to see further and to look deeper.

Photography – The first time I played around with a manual camera I used a long shutter speed on a merry-go-round and it blurred into another world. I was instantly hooked and knew what I wanted to spend my life doing. I needed to buy a camera straight away and it was a choice of buying an old Pentax or fixing the brakes on my car – I risked it and bought the camera! I soon found the work of Man Ray & Erwin Blumenfeld for their pioneering experimentation and magic, Paolo Roversi for the soul, Juergen Teller for his simplicity and Guy Bourdin for his graphic and surreal vision. It’s the work of these photographers that have influenced my world that I live in today.