Elizabeth II, Vivienne Westwood, Ewan McGregor, Björk, Heidi Klum, David Bowie – the list of personalities from politics and show business that the British star photographer Rankin has already portrayed could be continued at will.

His photographs are as elegant as they are provocative, as dynamic as they are cool, as creative as they are style-defining. The breadth of his work can be marveled at until September 27, 2023 at the Ernst Leitz Museum in Wetzlar. The exhibition “Rankin – Zeitsprünge” (English: Leaps in Time) gives exciting and surprising insights into his work and illustrates why Rankin is one of the most sought-after and influential photographers of our time.

We at WhiteWall are proud to be a cooperation partner of the exhibition and have produced Rankin's photographs as Fine Art Prints or ultraHD prints exclusively for “Zeitsprünge”.

What makes the exhibition at the Ernst Leitz Museum so special?

The idea of it being a large scale on a wall that you can really kind of sit with and really look at the detail of the picture. That idea is the ultimate thing that I think all photographers, when you're taking a picture, you're thinking of where it's going to be seen. And for me, the idea of “in real life”, a museum or a gallery or even a store, where you can see a picture at a size that you can really have that experience with, you know, sometimes the people are bigger than the person was in front of you and you see even more detail in the picture.

That’s an experience that all photographers and especially I really am aiming for. When I was like 21 and I imagine someone saying to me: You're going to be at the Ernst Leitz Museum in Wetzlar in 35 years out of gone. I would answer: What are you talking about? But of course, that's what I'm aiming for, because what I really want is the audience to have that connection with the picture and the pictures that size. Like that picture over there of the girl crying. If you go up and look at that picture in detail, there's something magical – the person comes to life, they’re bigger than life. And that experience, that intimacy, that connection, you have, between you and the person. With these pictures you get to have an intimate moment with the person.

And that's kind of what photography is about. For me, it's like me experiencing and showing you how I see them and then you getting the chance to do that - without me in the way. And that, for me is one of the things that is important about photography, it's also about capturing memories within a visualization. And I think that sometimes even photographers forget that it really does come down to a representation of something that happened in a moment.

So I want it to be art, but I also want it to be human and I want it to be connected. So that's why I don't do the pictures that are maybe too serious or trying to be serious.

Photo: Rankin

What is it that makes Leica so special to you?

To see me through your lens, to see me through the Leica lens and the Leica to be the most important camera in the world, the most important visualization of photography. That's a real amazing thing for me to have.

I don't like pictures, for example, of people looking off moodily to the side because to me that's not what my intention is. My exchange with my subject is much more confrontational. And I think that there's this idea that to do a serious photograph, you have to have a serious intent. I started from a background where photography was an “other” to me, like I didn't have any creative mentors. I didn't know anybody that took photographs. So when I found photography, it was kind of through just a mate who had a camera and it was a cheap camera. And like at the beginning, because I'm from quite a working class background, I’d use cameras I could afford. Like a Leica to me was this thing that was, you know, absolutely a premium product. And I would have always loved to use it.

So eventually when I could afford a Leica, I'm using it because it's the best camera for purpose in that moment. Miley Cyrus over there or Arnold Schwarzenegger over there and like the connection between them, or like Robert Downey Jr. What I love is that they could literally be taken yesterday or tomorrow or 20 years ago, and they still feel and look like they're trying to capture a moment between me and the subject. The thread that kind of connects them all, is really fractions of time and moments in time.

Photo: Rankin

How do you like seeing your printed images?

Yeah, I think the prints are really, really solid. Really good. Thank you, good job!

What does photography mean to you?

I have always wanted the audience to see the way I see the world. And I'm trying really hard to show the audience the perspective that I've got on stuff, whether that's a person or whether that's a still life or whether that's a landscape.

That idea of being able to go: This is the way I see it. These pictures, you get to have an intimate moment with the person, and that's kind of what the photography is about. For me, it's like me experiencing and showing you how I see them and then you getting the chance to do that without me in the way.

I think that photography is at a very unusual and unique point in its history, pretty much for the last 160 years, very few people could use it. By giving it to everybody and making it very easy to not even kind of copy, just like emulate, because smartphones don't actually take photographs in the same way that cameras take them. And we have to really remember that. So everything's kind of emulating, the photograph is kind of a bad reflection in a mirror of what actually is, you know, what a camera can do.

It's a very special thing, photography. And it has so much ability to move and drive societal change and to show things in a light that has never been shown before.

It's like handing toddlers the keys to the Aston Martin or the Rolls-Royce. To be a photographer, you have to have a responsibility. You have the responsibility to yourself as the person taking it, to the subject that you're photographing, and to the audience that is seeing the picture. And if you don't have that responsibility, if you throw it around willy nilly and you can retouch it, change it, you can fabricate it with artificial intelligence, you can enhance it so it's not actually really what was there in the first place. To do any of these things to it, is to undermine the power of it.

Photo: Rankin

And what does the title "Zeitsprünge" (Leaps in Time) say about the exhibition?

I'm looking to create pictures that are almost like time capsules for the person that I'm photographing. So time is a really big thing for photography. We deal in time, we photograph in fractions of seconds. The whole of this exhibition, you could probably say, is one second in total, maybe 2 seconds. And then all my pictures. I'm trying very hard for them to be images that are best image of that moment and possibly that person, but also live and breathe in perpetuity.

Timeless is a really great expression because it's something that I bring to each session that I make. Beth Ditto for me, that's hopefully one of the best photographs ever taken of Beth Ditto. And what I'm really, really hoping is that in 100 years people look back and go, oh, that photograph of Beth Ditto that was in that band, that’s a picture that really kind of represents her and shows you a part of her personality that makes you understand who she was in the moment. And that human connection, when you look at the picture, she's kind of this icon. She's almost kind of like a visual representation of the music that she makes. But she's still that person that's looking out of the picture at you. And that's what I'm trying to do in a lot of my photographs, is kind of take away the disconnect between the subject and the audience. I want the audience to feel really connected when they look at the picture.