| This is the way it usually goes: a push from one of us, a pull from the other. In the end, it’s hard to tell who’s who or what belongs to whom. We’ve been collaborating for eight years now, and it’s beginning to feel like we’re one being with four arms and two halves of the same brain. I guess that would make us half-wits and that is not what I am trying to say, but I digress… Camilla and I have always made the images that we wanted to see or at least that’s what we’re in the habit of telling people. We are often inspired by very simple concepts: palette, tonality and mood, to name a few. Our palette is extremely important, and very intuitively chosen. Where some see white, we see a million shades of grey. |  |
Kate and Camilla
This is the way it usually goes: a push from one of us, a pull from the other. In the end, it’s hard to tell who’s who or what belongs to whom. We’ve been collaborating for eight years now, and it’s beginning to feel like we’re one being with four arms and two halves of the same brain. I guess that would make us half-wits and that is not what I am trying to say, but I digress…
Camilla and I have always made the images that we wanted to see or at least that’s what we’re in the habit of telling people. We are often inspired by very simple concepts: palette, tonality and mood, to name a few. Our palette is extremely important, and very intuitively chosen. Where some see white, we see a million shades of grey. Tone is very important—we just finished a new portfolio and the intention there was to set a Kate and Camilla tone. Whether we’re doing landscape or fashion, the attitude is maintained, and this is hard to describe, but it’s palpable when you leaf through the 100 pages.
A certain, anarchic “What would happen if…?” exists in all of our imagery, and continues long after the photographs are finished. Images that we had thought were simple and beautiful have upset people and images intended for one venue end up in another or are consumed by very different appetites. We never know what’s going to happen with an image, what it’ll lead to or how it will be experienced. For us, it’s always very surprising.
We aren’t bound to any one application of photography. There’s very little we can’t or don’t shoot, and the confidence in knowing this allows us a certain recklessness. We can indulge in all sorts of concepts, subjects and environments; as long as we have the impulse to do it, we can do it…together.
We don’t like to stick to one discipline but, if pressed, we’d tell you that, in one way or another, we think of all of our images as some form of portraiture. Not portraiture in the sense that we are trying to achieve a truthful representation of a subject, however. Rather, our subjects become extensions of our collaboration. Their input and attitudes, or lack thereof, often shape the final product of a shoot.
