Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC has always thought about doing it – and now he finally has. Deakins, who has rarely shown his still work, is publishing a book of his still photography.
BYWAYS includes previously unpublished personal black-and-white stills that reflect a life spent looking and telling stories through images, from 1971 to the present. After graduating from college, Deakins spent a year photographing life in rural North Devon on a commission for the Beaford Arts Centre; these images attest to a keenly ironic English sensibility, and also serve as a record of a time and place of vanished post-war Britain.
Although photography has remained one of Deakins’ few hobbies, more often it is an excuse for him to spend hours just walking, his camera over his shoulder, with no particular purpose but to observe. Some of the images in this book, such as those from Rapa Nui, New Zealand and Australia, he took whilst traveling with James. Others are images that caught his eye as walked on a weekend, or catching the last of the light at the end of a day’s filming whilst working on projects in cities such as Berlin or Budapest, on Sicario in New Mexico, Skyfall in Scotland and in England on 1917.
Deakins said: “My work as a cinematographer is a collaborative experience and, at least when a film is successful, the results are seen by a wide audience. On the other hand, I have rarely shared my personal photographs and never as a collection.”
The book will be released in the UK in August and in the US in the autumn. You can pre-order it here.
