Capturing Bao Song

There is a particular awkwardness, and a particular pleasure, in photographing another photographer. They know exactly what you are doing. They have stood where you are standing, made the same small adjustments to a collar, watched the same flicker of self-consciousness cross a face and waited it out. You cannot hide the mechanics from them, and so you stop trying.

I met Bao earlier this year through my wife Sasha, for whom he had shot a portfolio of fashion portraits — a sharp, considered body of work that told me a good deal about him before we had properly spoken. Seeing him in person, I had the thought that visits most photographers eventually: that the man behind the camera would make a fine subject in front of one. He agreed, with the easy generosity of someone who understands the favour both ways.

We shot three registers across the sitting. The first, in a worn black denim jacket with his hair drawn back, has the quiet of a man caught mid-thought — the profile turned away, the light raking across the brow and falling off into shadow, more Ribera than fashion plate. The second, in a distressed leather coat with the collar standing, is the most direct: the eyes come round to camera and hold there, unhurried. The third I like best of all — hair loosed and falling, a plain black turtleneck, the face lit clean and frontal against a soft painterly ground. It is the most classical of the three and, I think, the truest.

Bao sat well, which is to say he stopped performing almost at once and simply let the camera have him. That is rarer than it sounds, and rarest of all in those who know the trick from the other side.

A delight, start to finish. My thanks to him — and to Sasha, who introduced us.