At first we thought Mr. Lamb was a war photographer, but it turned out he is just a guy with a creative imagination. His Army men serie shows us toy soldiers conquering his living room. Totally out gunned and outnumbered he shot back with a Canon point and shoot camera until the massacre was over. It's on of the coolest and highly inspirational serie of images that I came across this year. We dove into his portfolio and had a little chat with the man himself.
One thing that worries me about a lot of photographic instruction is that it produces robots
Who's the person behind the photos?
My name is Rowan Lamb, I am 28 years old. That's about it, isn’t it? That's me all over. I have had three teeth removed, but no tattoos or distinguishing features that would be useful to a policeman. I wear a beard on my face. I live in Cambridge, UK, with my beautiful girlfriend Ellen, and we want to get a dog.
What got you into photography, and what makes you keep on doing it?
I’ve had some sort of camera since I was a boy, but it was college before I took it seriously. I loved having the college darkroom to myself – no-one went in there so I could spend hours on my own. My whole family is creative in some way, but I’m the only photographer really. I’ve got a model maker/designer, a programmer, a painter and an architect in my immediate family, so there was always something going on at home. Hundreds of books on art and design on the shelves, that kind of thing.
Photography is a solo-sport for me – I always feel wrong when I’m shooting and there are people around, especially people I know. I keep photographing because I just feel weird without taking a picture every couple of days, and there are always photographs to be taken. It's constantly on my mind – they say that men think of sex every 6 seconds. Embarrassingly, I think about photography for the other 5…
If we'd like to trade something for a photo you made, what should the CFYE delivery man bring to your door?
Another photo! At university we used to swap photographs all the time, and had I thought harder about it, I would have kept more of them in better condition! Exchanging prints is a very easy way for photographers to build up a really great collection of original art. Either that or a gold plated Leica.
What's your favourite item to take on the road with you?
Camera-wise it would be my current camera, a Canon 400D. I’m a recent convert to digital, and I love the freedom it gives you. Basically, I can shoot forever, for free! Any tool that allows me to take infinite photographs and not spend another penny must be a good thing. I keep everything in a grotty old canvas bag, which really doesn’t look like a camera bag. I’ve never been someone who collects cameras and gear – I have a camera and a couple of lenses, and that's it. I think I’ve probably only ever wanted a flash gun once in my life. I got over it. I do have a tripod, which is in reserve for when I start shooting very early in the morning. I’ve been dreaming recently about taking a long photographic trip, walking along railway tracks. For that I’d want to take a tent and camp alongside the tracks. My plan would be to walk one direction for about three weeks, and then just catch a train home at the end. There are some amazing things to be seen along the tracks, where access is limited and things have been left to rot. I was trying to work out yesterday how far I would get in 21 days, and I think I could make it to Scotland. In 21 days I’d hope to cover 300 miles, so it's do-able. I’d be stopping all the time to take pictures though, so I’d probably only make it to York.
Something really fun about me:
I cook a mean pancake. I make a good pizza too. Basically, if a food is flat and round, I can cook it real good.
Best shooting location we should check out?
People ask me this a lot, and I'll be buggered if I can think of an answer. I rarely go back to a place once I’ve been there - I just shoot wherever I am, and make the most of it. I do like fairly run down places – the area behind Manchester Piccadilly train station is pretty interesting. I go to Manchester fairly regularly, but it's so massive that I haven’t seen all of it yet.
Tell us about your work as a photographer, did you just picked up a camera and educate yourself?
I spend most of my time looking at the ground – most of my pictures are of things lying on the ground, or hanging from walls. I don’t take many shots of people, for some reason. I took a degree Documentary Photography at Newport University, which was my main education in photography. It was a great course, mostly because I met so many great photographers, and got to see a lot of great work being produced. I got told on that course that I was too self indulgent, which jarred with the philosophy of the course to a certain extent. In the third year, I sort of just went my own way – I produced a body of work that I’m really proud of, but didn’t really sit well with the course tutors.
I have ideas all the time, but they usually involve spending hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, on very specialist equipment. I'll save them up for when I win the lottery, which I expect to happen very soon.
As far as self-education goes, you can’t go wrong just looking at pictures – bad pictures, good pictures, pictures that you love and hate. Everyone should look at William Eggleston, Daido Moriyama, Ed van der Elsken, Walker Evans, Elliot Erwitt and any of the other Magnum photographers. One thing that worries me about a lot of photographic instruction is that it produces robots – there are a million books out there that preach the same rules of composition and exposure, and things like that. Experimentation is rarely encouraged, and even when it is, it's usually within the confines of prescribed 'breaking the rules chapters, which are then ignored later on. If I were to write a photography 'How to…’ book, it would be one page that said 'Take photographs, and show them to people.’ That's it.
What's your camera setup?
At the moment I use a Canon 400D with a 35mm f/2 lens for about 80% of my shots, but I also use a 50mm f/1.8 sometimes. I used to shoot a Canon EOS 30 with the same lenses, and before that I had a Canon AE1 with a big bag of cheap lenses that I stole from my Dad. I don’t have it any more – it was stolen in turn by my little brother. I wish I did, it was a fantastic camera that I truly loved. I do have a couple of other little smaller, older cameras that I’ve been given as presents. My favourite of those is a Canonet QL17, which has a dodgy meter, but it feels lovely in my hand.
How does your environment react on you taking your camera everywhere and shooting all the time?
I really should take my camera with me all the time, but I don’t. I have regular spasms of shooting, where my camera comes everywhere, but that's usually only once a week. My girlfriend has a very snap-happy father, so she's used to me wandering off to take some pictures in a skip or something. My style of photography means that it doesn’t intrude in to my daily life too much – I rarely spend more than 2 seconds taking any given photograph, most of the time I don’t even break my stride.
What's the strangest thing that ever happened to you when you were out shooting photos?
I did a photoshoot over a few days in a small gym once, and there were a number of men there that wanted me to take 'vanity’ shots of them flexing and things. I had to politely decline…
I did once almost fall through the floor of a burnt out building that I’d broken into, but that was not strange so much as terrifying.
Who is your favourite movie/gaming/cartoon character?
Can I choose one from a book? I'll go for Orr from Catch 22. He's pretty hilarious, but hugely complex emotionally. Catch 22 is my favourite book, and I’ve read it once a year since I was 15. I used to have a girlfriend who had a secret crush on Sonic the Hedgehog, so not him. God, this is actually a really tricky question.
Which artist would you like to work with?
Another really tricky question! I don’t think I’d want to work with another photographer, I’m a solo photographer don’t forget! I’d like to work with a writer though – I’ve been looking at W Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh project, and although that turned into monstrous mess, collaboration with a writer was the genesis of that project. Or 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’, where Walker Evans and James Agee made a wonderful piece of work.
Anyway, I can’t think of a specific writer, but that's what I’d like to do. All the writers I’d like to work with are dead – Charles Bukowski would have been a dream.
Having said that I wouldn’t want to work with another photographer, I am still taking pictures for a book that I am (one day) going to make with a friend of mine called James. We take photographs that are simultaneously similar and completely different. We compliment each other nicely. It's going to be called Conker, and will be out some time in the next century – we’re both a bit naff at keeping in touch, but the idea of Conker is still there.
If you could fill a swimming pool with something, what would it be?
Um, water? I don’t know about this. Perhaps I’d fill it with lots of studio equipment and use it as an open air studio for a day, taking portraits. I wish that answer didn’t have a photographic theme, but there you go, it did.
Favourite city, and coolest thing about it?
I love Paris, you can’t go wrong there. I did enjoy Las Vegas in a perverse fashion. Both of them are so rich in photographic potential, so they would be great fun to wander around. Another boring photo answer!
What can we expect from you in the future?
Well, there's my train tracks idea, which won’t happen very soon – I’m pretty sure walking along train tracks is illegal here. Also I want to take a series of portraits of racing pigeons. Pigeon racing is fairly popular in the UK, and the pigeons are treated like little avian athletes, so I’d love to get involved with that. That's one of my expensive projects though, because I’d like to shoot it on 5x4, and I don’t have the budget. I’m really enjoying making photo books at the moment, and I’m starting to frame up a lot more of my work for exhibition. Plus I’m going to revamp my website soon – www.rowanlamb.co.uk could do with a make-over.
Someone once asked William Eggleston if he considered himself a landscape photographer, and he replied that he liked to document 'life as it is now’, which is something that I really identify with, so I’m just going to do that…
