Who or what has been your favourite subject to date? Most of what I photograph in my professional life is other people’s art: the work of lighting designers, set and costume designers, the actors themselves, each aspect painstakingly considered and rehearsed. And so outside of work I like to turn my lens on subjects more unpredictable, more ‘real’. For example, I spent some time with democracy activists in Hong Kong in 2019, when resistance to the Chinese government was at its height, and produced some of the work that means the most to me. There was a raw desperation and resolve that I have rarely seen in other protest movements, because these people were not taking a couple of hours out of their weekend to make a point on behalf of others: they were on the streets day after day after day, fighting for their own home, their own freedom, and for the lives of their children. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’: discuss . . . A well-written haiku of only ten words can evoke in the imagination a more beautiful picture than many people are able to take with a camera, and yet a thousand words may often fail to communicate the beauty of a great photograph. As with so much in life, it depends on the quality, rather than the quantity, of both the words and images. 

What tactic(s) do you use to put a subject at their ease? My favourite resource for capturing people at ease is patience. In a professional setting this often isn’t possible because of time constraints, but I love to watch a face closely, waiting for that subtle and momentary change of expression which indicates that the subject has forgotten that I’m there, if only for a second: they’ve gone somewhere inside themselves, and it shows on their face. Then something real is expressed, and that’s when I release the shutter.

Who was the biggest influence in making you pick up a camera and become the photographer you are today? I was 14 when my parents gave me my first camera, and I loved it both as a device for recording and commemorating things, and as a social tool. As a shy and awkward teenager, it was a literal shield that I could lift to my face to cover it whenever I felt embarrassed or wanted to hide. But it was cinema that made me realise that the power of the camera to create beauty and not merely capture it. Foremost, I have the films of Wong Kar-wai to thank for this awakening; many years later, it was a dream come true to work and drink with Wong’s collaborator on those movies, the great cinematographer Chris Doyle. 

‘The camera never lies’: discuss . . . Cameras don’t lie, but photographers do. A camera does not lie in the sense that it faithfully represents how a scene or a person or an object looked at the time it was taken. But what is contained in a photograph is strictly delineated by the edge of the frame, and manipulated by the angle from which it is taken. That is to say, how something looks is merely the surface; the reality of what is going on could be totally different. A photograph is an invitation to the viewer to imagine what the reality is, to attempt to grasp it for themselves. 

Is AI a threat to your business? More than a threat: AI is already taking work away from me and from other photographers. Where once I might have been commissioned to take the photograph that would be used for a poster, many marketing teams are opting to save time and money and create the image using AI. Despite this, I feel safer from the threat than many commercial and fashion photographers must, because the majority of my work involves photographing things that take place on a stage, where what really truly happened at that time matters. I don’t see AI replacing that. 

What’s your favourite bit of photographic kit? I’m not much of a gearhead, but a 50mm f/1.4 lens has been a mainstay of my kit bag ever since I started out, and I’d hate to be without one. It corresponds closely to what we see with the eye, while offering a gorgeous sense of depth and the ability to shoot in very low light conditions.

What would be your main advice to an aspiring photographer? Learn some other associated skills, such as videography/design/marketing, because the days are numbered for the role of stills-photographer-and-only-stills-photographer. I count my blessings every day (grateful, incredulous) that it’s one I’ve managed to occupy for almost two decades now.

My Favourite Photograph

Photographing a piece of theatre is like being in a dance with the actors on stage, reacting to every one of their movements and trying to predict the next. This is where it’s useful to have an understanding of the shape of a story and a scene, and this shot [from James IV: Queen Of The Fight] represents an occasion when that skill paid off: I was in exactly the position I wanted to be in for this epic moment.

Read more of our photography special by reading our interviews with Mihaela Bodlovic, Kat Gollock, Jess Shurte and Andrew Jackson; visit Tommy Ga-Ken Wan's website.