Episode 29: Albert Watson (Photographer: Vogue, Rolling Stone, Harper’s Bazaar, more)

Today’s guest, the celebrated photographer Albert Watson, OBE, is a man on the move.

This is not a recent development. Watson’s professional journey began in Scotland in 1959, where he studied mathematics at night. His day job? Working for the Ministry of Defense plotting courses—speed, altitude, distance, payload—for British missiles pointed towards Cold War Russia.

Watson’s affinity for the mathematical gave way to his interest in the arts when, in school, he dove head-first into all of them: drawing, painting, textiles, pottery, silversmithing, and graphic design. 

Later, on his 21st birthday his wife bought him a small camera. He became obsessed:

“All I know is that I clicked the shutter, and suddenly, magically, I got negatives back, that I could learn to process myself. And then, even better, I got into a dark room with a piece of white paper under an enlarger, and you put it in some chemistry, and lo and behold, up comes an image. Magic! Black magic! I called it. Amazing, insane, beautiful.”

Then came the magazines: Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone, GQ, Mademoiselle, Entertainment Weekly, Details, and Vogue. All of the Vogues. And the ad campaigns: Prada, Chanel, Revlon, and Levis.

And yet, after all that, talk to the man about his work, any facet of his career, and the conversation invariably comes back to “the print”—the math, the chemistry, the graphic design involved—and about the journey the print takes, from camera to magazine, from magazine to gallery and, sometimes, from gallery to museum, as so many of his have.

Our editor-at-large George Gendron talks to Watson about all of it—day rates, social media, and that stunning apartment in TriBeCa.