idil sukan

This is nostalgia-pop 80s star Quint Fontana, friend to George Michael and independent smoking jacket importers. Purveyor of medallions and minimalist underwear. As presented by Andy Davies, for his new show at the Edinburgh Festival. Here he is in my studio, dressed like this. No one else is around. We take the final shot, we laugh, Andy starts to change back into his regular, much more boring clothes, and my boyfriend arrives. There's velvet draped on the chair, a discarded smoking jacket, and a man in my back room hurriedly putting on his clothes back on. "Oh, am I interrupting your shoot?" was his kind & loving response. I could have easily been just mopping up after a challenging afternoon orgy with all of Bon Jovi and he would have asked the same thing. Being a photographer is too perfect a cover story. Thankfully though this photo is the extent of the erotica that takes place in my studio, we're all spared the ageing Bon Jovi bottom photos. 

David Trent is LIVE at the Pleasance Courtyard in 2014. He is of course, a huge rock megastar, and this is the cover of his bootleg vinyl that you literally can't find anywhere any more. For this new shot of him, my sisterly assistant Julia added set design to her endless list of transferable skills - she hand-made the large stage-light 4x4 modifier out of cardboard and black paint. We recreated the glorious stage atmosphere in the Draw HQ studio with 3 flashguns, the cardboard and a smoke machine. This is how you make Maximum Rock n Roll, underpinned by David's Bob Marley t-shirt. David is one of Draw HQ's favourite all-time people - Julia and I have adventured with him in the abandoned chalk mines of Cambridge - photos from that in a future post. Find out more about him here.

David Trent: Bootleg © Idil Sukan/Draw HQ 2014

This is a new shot I did of comedian and writer Bridget Christie. I've photographed Bridget for a couple of years now and she's always a pleasure to work with. This year I wanted to go with something very bold and striking for her, to visually build on the success that she had with her show A Bic For Her in 2013. The Draw HQ studio was in full red backdrop mode and Bridget brought a series of fantastic hand-crafted cowboy shirts, in white, red and black. My favourite shots were when we we went full red on red, like this shot. Sometimes my whole team is involved in a shoot, but with Bridget it's always just been me and her (and sometimes her cat) in the room. I find that the best pictures are always of people who are comfortable with who they are - and that's how Bridget comes across. The more I think about that and the more people I photograph, the more I realise it's pretty much the biggest compliment I can give someone. It's much more difficult and inspiring than it sounds. Also - she is very, very funny, go and find where she's performing live here. 

Bridget Christie: Red on Red © Idil Sukan/Draw HQ 2014

My Draw HQ studio was mutilated into an Lord-of-the-Flies-chic horror show for one of my favourite shoots of the year, for Joanna Carolan and Pascale Wilson to promote their sketch show Shirley & Shirley at the Edinburgh Festival 2014. This shoot was a result of a team effort from an extended Draw HQ squad. Our immeasurably brilliant stylist Lex Wood did the honours with Kasia Fortuna and her assistant doing some sterling vintage hair acrobatics (there are more pictures with a second look that I will put up another time). The Draw HQ full-back Sophie Fox, food stylist by trade, negotiated the pig (and matching trotters) from her local butcher. After months of trying to maintain a self-congratulatory vegan kitchen, it now played host to a pig-based 'Nam. My sister/assistant/asisternt Julia and Sophie handled lettuce-fluffing and apple-tilting. Their excellent teamwork had been forged earlier that day as they carefully wallpapered the otherwise white backdrop with beautiful Orla Kiely wallpaper, kindly supplied to us by Harlequin. Jo and Pascale were hands down some of the funniest people we've had in the studio and - bonus - they were wonderfully photogenic, in spite of the increasingly warm and pungent pig bits. 

Shirley & Shirley (with pig) © Idil Sukan / Draw HQ 2014