How Albert Watson created his greatest shots: 'The leopard just went for Jagger'

“If you’re always looking for shots, shots will come to you.” It is a mantra that Albert Watson has tried to keep in mind throughout his 50-year career as a fashion and portrait photographer. His star-studded portfolio – highlights of which furnish a new book, Creating Photographs – is a testament to how thoroughly he has succeeded. Watson is behind some of the most memorable high-fashion and celebrity shots of the past half-century, featuring everyone from Kate Moss to Mick Jagger, yet his was, he says, “a very long journey into photography”.

Born on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where his mother was a hairdresser and his father a professional boxer, he worked first on Blue Streak missiles for the Air Ministry, and then as a taster in a chocolate factory. Studying art at night school provided his stepping stone into photography, via Dundee College of Art, and then the Royal College of Art in London. “When I got my hands on a camera, things changed for me,” he says.

In 1970, at 28, he arrived in Washington DC with his wife Elizabeth, their two young children and just enough money to make it to Los Angeles in a second-hand Mustang. Once there, Watson’s work began to turn heads: his first paying job was for cosmetics company Max Factor. Within a year, he had his own studio; within three, the biggest in L A.

Now 79, Watson, who has lived in New York since 1976, has shot over 100 covers for Vogue and 40 for Rolling Stone; his photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the globe. Inspired by films, art and theatre, he has, he says, “always followed my curiosity”. Here, he tells the stories behind his most memorable pictures.

Kate Moss, Marrakech, Morocco, 1993

“I went to Morocco to shoot Kate Moss for German Vogue. We started at 7 am and worked a 14-hour day. I took this shot about 6pm: I asked her to stare into the setting sun and imagine herself as some fairy in the woods, looking for something. It gave the picture a greater intensity. At the end of the day, she told me that it was her 19th birthday, so I organised a cake; she was delighted.”

Gigi Hadid in Iris van Herpen dress, New York City, 2019

“This was done in New York in classic studio lighting for a young designer called Iris van Herpen. Her dresses are meticulously made out of laser-cut silks and are quite high tech. Photographers tend to shoot them static but in this case I wanted a bit of movement: the idea was to slightly destroy the form, to give it another dimension. Gigi was one hundred per cent professional; she reminds me of old-fashioned models from the Sixties or Seventies who would turn up already immaculate. She’s very focussed and concentrated, and she really listens to you. The movement in the photograph is very subtle, it’s not dramatic, she’s not two feet off the ground. But I think it has a beauty and it’s a very good interpretation of the dress.”

 Jack Nicholson, Aspen, Colorado, 1981

“I arrived at Jack’s house right on time, at half past eight in the morning, and nobody replied. Eventually, he came to the door, and his hair was all over the place, because I had woken him, and he said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ He’d completely forgotten we were coming. It started snowing heavily, which was great because this was just after The Shining came out, with its famous snow scene. I did a couple of shots with him in the garden chair but I wanted him to be a bit more covered in snow. He said, ‘I’m enjoying this so much, why don’t you go inside and my maid will cook you breakfast.’ I sat in the kitchen eating pancakes, watching him. He was ecstatic just to sit in the snow. You can see that in his face in the picture.”

Uma Thurman, New York City, 1993

“This shot was done in the Chelsea Hotel. When I took it, we’d already done a few shots, and Uma was just sitting on the bed, looking across at something on the other side of the room. You should always be looking out for a shot – if you’re at the theatre, or a movie, or watching TV – because sometimes some of the best ones come when you’re not giving direction. I saw her in that moment and I thought she just looked powerful and beautiful. I took the picture because of that.”

Red Cuillins Road, Isle of Skye, Scotland, 2013

“When I went to Skye, I was interested in how painters like Edgar Degas could paint a simple hill and make it charismatic. I took a book of his landscapes with me, and another one of Victorian Gothic paintings, and then I fixed in my mind dramas like Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. I moved the camera during exposure to slightly distort the perspective: it puts a strange mood into the picture. When you look at it, you can imagine a dragon flying out of those mountains.”

Alan Shepard’s Lunar Suit, Apollo 14, Air and Space Museum, Washington DC, 1990

“When the Smithsonian put the suit on display, they strip-cleaned it, so when you see it now it looks weirdly brand new, like it’s never been anywhere. But I was lucky enough to photograph it before they did that. The fact that it was dirty and grimy appealed to me: one might hope that the dust on it was moon dust; in a weird way, the dirtiness makes the whole thing more glamorous.”

Mick Jagger in Car with Leopard, Los Angeles, 1992

“Mick’s not very comfortable with doing dance shots in the studio, so I needed another kind of eccentricity for this picture. I thought: ‘Let’s get a leopard in here!’ When we put it in the car, the first thing it did was go for Mick, so I had to build a plexiglass partition, which [in print] would drop into the gutter between two pages, out of view. Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t just splice two shots together – instead, I did the shot of the two of them in the car. Mick was very funny about it: I said ‘I’m a bit concerned’ and he said, ‘Yes, but you’re not the one in the car!’ In fact, I used quite a long lens, so I was very comfortable.”

Creating Photographs is published by Lawrence King at £14.99. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit the Telegraph Bookshop