M alaysian born Edwin is one half of the highly successful international fine art photography partnership of Anderson & Low,

collaborating with Jonathan Anderson since 1990. They were the first photographic artists ever to exhibit at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 2001 and were presented with an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2015.

Their work includes portraiture, architectural studies, abstract images, reportage, nudes, and landscapes and is noted for its attention to concept, form, lighting and printing.

The pair are recognised for their studies of athletes and for projects about costume and identity, which have been exhibited worldwide. Their exhibitions include:- Road to 2012, as official artists for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, with a specially commissioned exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Athletes, Circus, Gymnasts/NDGT, Athlete/Warrior, Endure - and they are the only artists ever to be given unrestricted access to depict how the Chinese elite gymnasts train for the Olympics.

In 2015 Anderson & Low were invited to create a special art project around the creation of the James Bond movie, Spectre. Shot entirely at

Pinewood studios, UK, the project focused on the extraordinary, gargantuan and detailed sets created for the film. Their portrait of Bond director Sam Mendes is now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Later that year the pair were also commissioned to create images for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this commission resulting from their project Manga Dreams.

Their works reside in some of the world’s most prestigious museums and art galleries and in March of this year, their highly successful exhibition 'Voyages', was premiered at the Science Museum, London. To create this project, Anderson & Low created painting-like images of the museum's historic collection of model ships, making the models resemble real ships at sea. “Photographed through their protective sheeting, the models take on a Turner-esque narrative, evoking epic seascapes as the pictures play with scale and context” Evening Standard.

We were delighted that Edwin took time out of his busy schedule to meet with us at his and Jonathan’s exhibition ‘Voyages’ at the Science Museum to talk about his Box Hill School days and his journey to becoming an internationally acclaimed artist.

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Edwin Low(1975 – 1977 Guardian)Photographic Artist

Michael Klim, Swimmer, Australia

Profile

PROFILE 01

First impressions of Box Hill School My parents chose Box Hill School for me with the help of the British Council. As my sisters were based in London at the time, it made sense for me to be at school in the vicinity. So I was 17 years old when I made the journey from Malaysia over to the UK and to Mickleham. Although I struggled emotionally with being away from home, it’s also true that as the second youngest of a family of 13 children I revelled in the feeling of freedom.

“Coming to a boarding school in a foreign country was to teach me how to stand on my own two feet and to make my own decisions without my older siblings telling me what to do.

I immediately fell in love with the architecture of Box Hill School and the whole ‘Englishness’ of the school although it was so alien to me. Cheese, for example, was a food I have never encountered before at home and, although I have grown to love it as an adult, it smelt like ‘smelly feet’ to me as a teenager. However being told that it would fill me up for the early morning runs encouraged me to eat it!

Artistic life at Box Hill SchoolThe art and drama that was available at Box Hill School soon appealed to me, I had always loved art and my parents were particularly supportive of my talent in that area. I was not very good at sport and lacked confidence and some would say skill in music! However, Mrs McComish encouraged me to take music lessons which I thoroughly enjoyed and in drama Mrs Radford inspired me to take part in the famous Box Hill School Drama productions including directing me in the ‘King and I’.

“I will always cherish the Box Hill School mindset, and particularly the influence of Mrs Radford and Mr Reed, instilling in me the idea of having a liberal outlook in the sense that there are very few absolutes in life, that very little is "black or white", and there may be great merit in many different approaches and ideas, coupled with the self-belief that if you want something you go out and get it.

Teachers such as Mr Cameron who taught me art, Mr Perfect for photography and Mr

PROFILE Edwin Lowcontinued from the front page...

Hannah Whelan, Beth Tweddle, Jenni Pinches & Rebecca Tunley, Gymnasts from The Road to 2012

Shooting Gallery, Old MI6 Building from On the Set of James Bond's Spectre

Aaron Jackson, Gymnast, USAFA from the project Athlete-Warrior

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Reed who was my housemaster in Ralph gave me a lot of good advice when I was at school, advice that has stayed with me into adulthood.

We produced our art work in a cold and miserable building at Box Hill School but it didn’t matter. We were encouraged to aspire and were given the freedom and, most importantly, the luxury of being able to discover things slowly.

At that time Box Hill School allowed me to experiment with a lot of different artistic media, photography and fine art. This was and is so important. I hear a lot of children today say they “cannot draw” but encouragement and freedom is all that they need, confidence can then flow.

Life after Box Hill School – icons & heroesWhen I finished my Guardian year at Box Hill School I moved to London, to join my older sister, and went on to study Art and Architecture. However, it was not until my first collaboration with Jonathan in 1990 that my work came to public recognition when we were the first photographers to be invited to exhibit at the prestigious 1991 “Royal Academy Summer Exhibition” with ‘Victorian Mannequins’ a work using the gelatine silver process.

Our work was launched onto the international art world when we were invited by the National Art Gallery of Malaysia to create a new project for the 1998 Commonwealth Games. We decided to create iconic images of sport, primarily portraying Commonwealth athletes, showing the very hard process of preparation, photographing them in training halls, gymnasia, etc.

You need to remember that now ‘portraits’ of athletes and sportsmen and women are commonplace but back in 1998 this was ground-breaking work. I have always been very interested in human nature and our intimate photographs of athletes in training not only capture their journey and their story but mark how human limitations are tested and exceeded.

We have been humbled by the access that we have been given to our subjects training schedules. Trust between the photographer and the subject has

always been very important to us and allows us to build strong relationships with our subjects. This was particularly noted when we were given unrestricted access to the Chinese gymnastics in their training run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics - a privilege that had not been granted to anyone before, not Chinese nationals nor foreigners. Since our work in Malaysia we have been invited to America to photograph the USA Olympic athletes and were chosen as one of the London 2012 Olympic official artists. All of these are huge honours and privileges, and we are very mindful of the trust bestowed on us in giving us this access.

Following on from our work with iconic sports images we then became interested in the idea of hero. What is the image of a hero and what is our idea of a hero? This gave rise to our project Athlete/Warrior as follows:

During our exploration of this theme we were invited to photograph the US cadets from West Point Military Academy, Annapolis Naval Academy and The US Air Force Academy. We were fascinated by how their character, identity and personae changed depending on whether they were wearing their military uniforms or their sporting uniforms. And one thing that, was particularly poignant about this work made in early 1991 is that these cadets were part of the last intake that thought they would never go to war, modern day heroes. Many of those subjects, our friends, served in war zones. Some never made it back from their deployment and we found ourselves writing many war letters.

Film stars, dreams and the futureMore recently we have been invited to work on film projects which has been both stimulating and interesting. The Star Wars team approached us to take publicity photos for the film ‘The Force Awakens’ having seen our work with the Chinese gymnasts and our project Manga Dreams – the latter work that drew heavily on youth culture, cyber culture, and costume. They wanted us to re-create our mythical and heroic look for them, and importantly they could also see that we

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Profile

Hannah Whelan, Beth Tweddle, Jenni Pinches & Rebecca Tunley, Gymnasts from The Road to 2012

Shooting Gallery, Old MI6 Building from On the Set of James Bond's Spectre

Aaron Jackson, Gymnast, USAFA from the project Athlete-Warrior

03

REUNIO

could be trusted with the secrecy that surrounds the Star Wars brand, so I cannot speak any more about that project, except to say it was very hard work, tremendous fun, and truly we are really proud of the results that we created for them, including the ones that were used on the film poster. Of course, it’s still wonderful to see these images on posters and merchandising everywhere we travel.

We have also worked with the James Bond team and our photograph of Director Sam Mendes, on the set of Skyfall, was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and is now in the permanent collection.

“We were also given access to the latest James Bond film Spectre and chose our subjects to be the unsung heroes of the film; the set designers the producers and we also created a special art project about the sets themselves.

On the set of James Bond’s SPECTRE, the Production Designer of Spectre, Dennis Gassner, had approached the set construction in a very classical way, researching art and history and we wanted to pay homage to that with our photographs.

We wanted to show the extraordinary scale, and the beautiful, obsessive level of detail that went into these sets. The results were a beautiful stunning set of images which display the clash between fantasy and reality – the reality of the production kit and rigs and the fantasy of the sets. This can be seen in the Roman Palazzo scene where the traditional “trompe l’oeil” ceilings of the age have been replaced by the reality of a lighting rig overhanging the fantasy table and marble colours below. Some of the prints were later auctioned at Philips in London and the whole series is in a photographic book monograph of the project.

PROFILE Edwin Lowcontinued from page 3

The FutureHaving just finished our most recent exhibition ‘Voyages’ at The Science museum, I am planning to take some time off to relax and recharge, but there are exciting projects and adventures in the future. My journey in the world of art continues and I will always be grateful to the part that Box Hill School played in that journey.

TEDx Talks

Sharpening your senses | Anderson and Low | TEDxLondon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSedYUcH6nA&t=68s

www.andersonandlow.com

andersonandlow

All images © Anderson & Low. All Rights Reserved.

Palazzo, Rome from the set of James Bond's Spectre

Out of The Box | Issue 0404