THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS

Toby - So, Leigh, please forgive my poor memory, but when and how did we first actually meet, because it feels like I have just always known you?

Leigh - We loosely met in Summer of 1998 when you helped install an AF kitchen in Sarah’s house, our then two-yearold son posted our credit cards under the kitchen kickboard, now he would struggle as I believe your gap tolerances have improved.

Toby - And when did you start doing our photography, can you remember what our first job together was? Was it Becky Mietless kitchen in Hamsey? When was that?

Leigh - I think the first job was in December 2013 - doing a shoot of a house in the bottleneck featuring a wine cellar and rotunda in the garden. (Elisa had introduced us. I knew her from when she had been my assistant in the 90’s, a few 20-hour days shooting lamp posts in the midlands). I think this was the first shoot where we started to enjoy eating the props together. If the cheese hadn’t been to my taste, I might not be sat here answering your questions. I believe the second job in Hamsey had a pink flamingo as a prop, an idea we saw replicated on a kitchen advert en route to Dulwich last week.

Toby - I know that your background is in commercial photography, I seem to remember photos of electronic diodes of some kind, and lamp-posts. Can you remind me what you do other than interiors, and why you are the man that they send all the way to Scotland to photograph street furniture?

Leigh - Commercial subjects have been wide ranging from the underpants that King Charles the First was wearing when beheaded to vacuum chambers in California.

I never wanted to be a commercial photographer, (till the age of 16 my ideal career was to be a stunt man) but I have always loved Black and White photography. In the darkroom I used an Ilford printing paper called Galerie that was unbelievably expensive (Currently £255 for 50 sheets) I realised that if I did the odd commercial job, I could finance my habit for expensive darkroom materials.

"When I was in my late teens I was asked about my ambitions, the answer was easy; a pint of Harvey’s and a roll of film in my back pocket. Nothing changes."

I have never had a plan through life just said no to things I didn’t feel I could do. This filtered down to ‘location
photography of products’ or ‘anything but weddings’ I could never work out why so few photographers did location work. I then spent forty years driving in excess of 35,000 miles annually and lugging flight cases of equipment around and now have a bad back so finally I’ve managed to answer that one.

Toby - My favourite shots of yours are actually your black and whites which I believe you shot mainly in your 30’s. How come you did not pursue this as your main career?

Leigh - Black and white photography took hold of me early on, largely influenced by coming across a Don McCullin book and has remained with me ever since.

I had no wish to pursue it as a career as I’m certain the need to pay bills would have influenced the type of pictures I took, and I would have hated myself for it.

I have never taken black and white photographs for anyone other than myself and don’t feel the need to seek validation from strangers. I have always been hesitant to show people my images despite recognising that they may get some gratification from them. My photographs are fundamentally a product of my personal experience alone. I believe that other people can never see them in quite the same way and so I fear that sharing them will somehow undermine or dilute the essential fulfilment I need from them.

Toby - Would you ever consider a show of your early black and whites, even if just in our AAK on Lewes High Street?

Leigh - Maybe.

Toby - I look forward to our photography days, even though they can sometimes be long and tiring, as some of the most enjoyable days in my calendar. I particularly enjoy your take on life, which I would describe as thoughtful and incisive. If you could sum up your philosophy – feel free to throw in one or two of your pithiest quotes?

Leigh - My philosophy is four simple words: ‘Think Independently, question everything’. the first pair are essential but challenging in the current climate, the second pair relate to being curious and seeking reason.

If you need more pithy quotes I also subscribe to ‘Only dead fish swim follow the current’ and an Italian saying ‘Never shake hands with a policeman’s priest or a politician’. Louis Pasteur said that ‘Chance favours the prepared mind’. and maybe for good measure add ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’ following these will give you a head start.

Toby - I know you love your kit; is there one or two pieces you are most attached to? I can’t help seeing your Manfrotto tripod as an extension of your body. How long have you had it and how important is it and any other bits of kit to you?

Leigh - The main reason for having good kit, or the kit you are comfortable with, is it reduces the number of excuses you have. Knowing its dependable and you don’t have to worry about it also allows you more freedom to do other things like seeing! When I started commercially, I used to hire everything from a
car to a cable release. The first piece of kit I actually brought wasn’t a camera it was a tripod.

An Italian Manfrotto 058B purchased in 1983 and used every day pretty much including this morning. It’s accompanied me as far as Saudi Arabia, America and most of Europe.

I obsess over old Nikon Film cameras and their Nikkor lens in particular with an embarrassing number to my name, despite only really using one for most of my personal black and white work, The Nikon F body was in continuous production between 1959 and 1974 completely unchanged, try getting that past the marketing department today! Many mistakenly believe that they need a good camera to take good pictures, If I brought the same brushes as Picasso used, I’m not sure they would improve my watercolours.

Toby - You have spent the day in more Inglis Hall Kitchens than anyone else I can think of, other than myself. Can you tell me a little bit about this from your perspective?

Leigh - Apart from jealousy, usually my first thought on entering an Inglis Hall kitchen is daydreaming that this is my environment and that I have the culinary skills to use it to its full potential. As with many things that have been perfectly resolved it’s almost impossible to imagine them being any other way as they say, good design is invisible. On entering an Inglis Hall kitchen I can usually navigate my way round without thinking, everything feels natural, as if it’s always been this way, a clever trick as there is no universal template to be followed.

In general, the kitchens designer will have understood both the clients’ requirements and their personality, and the final product will reflect this. This enables the client to be themselves in that space and will enjoy and use it and, importantly for me, dress it in a way that reflects this. This makes a very cohesive environment that makes my job so much easier. So, when I first enter a kitchen, I’m immediately informed as much about the
client’s personality as I am about the physical kitchen itself. This is very cool to experience. I often wonder how things would turn out if one randomly swapped clients and kitchens around, disastrously I suspect.

Obviously with commercial project photography I am only brought in on completion, and happily bypass the many months of design, R+D, endless meetings, prototyping, before casually sauntering in to make a 1/100th of a second exposure to sum it all up. This makes me feel guilty, quite pressured and curious about what goes into a project and anxious about where it will go.

Arguably an unbiased fresh perspective is useful, and its rewarding to the client and myself if I pick up on the ethos they were trying to fulfil.

Toby - You went to Edinburgh with my co-director Tim, and on that shoot, Tim got a great shot of you looking like a Magnum photographer with a bonfire behind you. That project, IH.456. is one of our all-time favourites. The photography just seemed to come together perfectly. What is your memory of the project and the shoot?

Leigh - Photography is at best a compromise, a mix of many factors and it’s the photographer’s job to add them all to the mix in the correct proportion. With the Weir shoot the factors included, in no particular order, the light, the location, the brief, the client’s helpfulness, the kitchen itself, its direct environment, the end use of the images, the props, Tim’s direction, the materials used etc. On that day all of the factors were aligned in our favour which makes my life easier as the less I have to worry about the more I can concentrate on what
matters.

Toby - Recently, while finishing off shooting IH.564 you came up with a story inspired on a worn-out patch in their carpet just between the Aga and the Island, and you went home and wrote a wonderful little story about it that now features on our website. I was not even aware you were a writer, so what moved you to do this (and thank you by the way!)?

Leigh - I am not a writer but have always loved making things. When you make something, it gives you an understanding and appreciation of the skills of the someone who really know how to do it.

I once made a formal shirt to propose in and will never take a shirt for granted again knowing now what’s involved and how difficult it was.

Also, there are things that I want to remember, feelings, ideas and emotions for instance and describing them can trigger memories in my head that are more personally efficient than a photograph.

Toby - Do you have any favourite projects of ours that you can recall? I know you like quite a minimalist look.

Leigh - Not really a project in the way you are asking but as someone obsessed by fabricating things the new Swallow workshop is really quite something. In terms of actual kitchens then IH.316 Hartfield was a particular favourite in respect of the matching product and environment, IH.456 in East Lothian for similar reasons. Then IH.203 for elegance and IH.278 for colour and materials.

As ever it’s always the one on the drawing board that excites. I once asked an architect client who was a Greek classist about his favoured point in a building’s evolution, ‘after completion but before occupation’ is the standard reply I was expecting. However, Demetri said that it was ‘just after the foundations had been dug’. He explained that at this point all the architects’ intentions had been honoured and committed to, yet none of the compromises had started to interfere, the client hadn’t yet changed his mind, the builders had yet to let him down, the landscaping was yet to suffer with the weather etc.

Toby - If you were building a kitchen (hopefully an IH kitchen) – what would your brief be to the designers?

Leigh - I have a problem with details and logically for me my perfect house or kitchen wouldn’t have any, just a solid block with the volumes hewn out of it, ideally with the ratio of A4 paper, (One : the square root of two) in its design. Visit Matera’s cave dwellings in Basilicata to understand.

For some reason I’m not keen on storage above worktop height just to be awkward.

I don’t subscribe to minimalism except as a pure design exercise, in that there is nowhere to hide anything that’s unresolved.

However, I like my ‘stuff’ and feel that a simple environment can with withstand the chaos of material possessions and daily life much more robustly than an ornate detailed Victorian interior for example.

Toby - And, what about that Fiat 500 you re-built and then drove to the Pyrenees to buy an ice-cream! What happened there?

Leigh - An ambitious plan to inter-rail to all the corners of Europe in 1983 was foiled by the beauty of Italy combined with the desire not have to get on a train ever again, I have returned over twenty times to count old Fiat 500’s Cinquecento’s, amongst other pursuits like eating ice cream and photographing the people.

My mid-life crisis was to finally get married and buy one of the least powerful cars in existence.

Most men’s mid-life crisis at that age involves having an affair and buying a Porsche (re my ‘only dead fish follow the current’ quote)

Everyone asked what was I going to do with the Fiat once I had rebuilt it (1970 and baby blue) and as a joke I would reply ‘drive to Italy to get an ice cream’ eventually I decided that this was an actual plan, so off we went through France and Switzerland and over the Alps (slowly) to Aosta for a chocolate and lemon gelato, very nice too.

Toby - You have been a constant form of support for Inglis Hall over the years, as well as me personally, so thank you! And we love your work.

Leigh - Likewise x