Harry Borden looks back on a shoot with the popular comedian, actor and author
Looking back at portrait shoots I did much earlier in my career, it’s interesting to see how my shooting style has changed over the years. Back in 2000, for example, when I photographed Bob Mortimer, I would have taken a range of equipment to the shoot and tried as many different things as possible in the time available.
Over the years I had hit on a way of working that suited the magazines and newspapers that commissioned me. Here I would have been directing Bob’s poses, asking him to stand in a certain way, make an expression or perhaps do particular things, making it up as I went along and trusting my instincts.
It was a kind of creative scattergun approach. The resulting pictures didn’t tell you very much about the subject’s personality and I was less inclined to get amazing authentic moments, but that’s the way things were back then.
In this case, I was photographing Bob for Later magazine, a men’s magazine published by IPC that was aimed at a slightly older audience than Loaded, one of the company’s other publications. My brief was simply to shoot a range of images that would illustrate an interview with him, and one of those images would go on the cover.
Bob was then 40 years old. He’d had a career as a solicitor before beginning his partnership with Vic Reeves (real name Jim Moir) and co-starring in Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out in 1989. Since then, he’s appeared in numerous television series, including Gone Fishing, in which he and fellow comedian Paul Whitehouse reflect on their lives while on fishing trips around Britain.
I have photographed Bob with Vic Reeves, and dealing with the two of them together was a very different experience. On the shoot there were several people, including assistants and agents, and because Vic and Bob had an audience, they were bouncing off each other in the same way that they do on stage. At one point, Bob said to me, ‘I like your head, it looks like a peanut!’ Everyone started laughing. It was fair comment, but very disarming.
Bob on his own was much more thoughtful and quieter. However, he has a very characterful and expressive face and was very happy to do whatever it took to create a good picture. The shoot took place at Curtain Road Studio in Hoxton, London, whi
