Is it a process of carefully controlled chaos or trial and error?
Mark Borthwick: Truthfully it’s still a surprise. It’s different every time. It really does depend on the temperature of the light, the brightness of the light, if I expose the image directly to the sun or directly to the shade or candlelight. It’s a little bit like a mindgame, it gives you the opportunity to lose yourself a little bit and play a little game with yourself where you are losing control. The control itself is not so much that I know what’s going to happen but that there’s different ways to doing it. For sure I get an enormous amount of joy because it does eminently produce these images that are otherworldly and come from another time. They have a vibrational effect and make me go, ‘Wow!’ and make me tickle and feel good. That’s something new. DD: You’ve been taking photos of iconic women like Cat Power, Chloe Sevigny and Stella Tennant for over 10 years now. How have you seen them grow and how has your relationship with them developed over this time? Mark Borthwick: It’s
