When Harry Met...
Harry Borden looks back on meeting and photographing one of his childhood heroes, actor and singer David Soul
When I was about 13 years old and a pupil at Tiverton High School in Devon, crime drama Starsky & Hutch was the coolest show on TV. I would watch it with my dad on Saturday nights and loved its two stars, David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser.
During school lunchtimes I’d go to the town centre with my friends and we’d re-enact the opening credits sequence, grabbing and hurling each other into cars.
So when I was offered the chance to meet and photograph David Soul, I immediately said yes. It was a commission for The Scotsman and involved shooting portraits of him at the Channel Four building in central London.
David was a major TV star on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1970s and also had huge success as a singer with his number one hit singles Don’t Give Up on Us and Silver Lady. He continued working in TV and theatre in the following years, but never again reached the levels of fame that he had experienced in those early years.
When I met him, in 2000, he was 57 and although had lost his youthful looks he still retained his charm and charisma. I showed him the portfolio I carried around at that time, which was always extremely useful in getting me more time with subjects. It contained my portraits of people including Martin Scorsese and Demi Moore, and not only showed I was a decent photographer but also that I’d worked with people at the top of their business.
I love photographing people who have been through a period of fame and come out of the other end of it; they’ve been around the block a few times and tend to be wiser for the experience. I found David to be very nice, likeable and extremely easy-going, willing to do whatever I suggested.
The Channel Four building, designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, was a convenient place to meet, but also turned out to be a terrific location for the shoot. I had already scouted the building for possible locations and we spent some time trying out shots with backgrounds featuring the building’s various pipes and grilles. I was shooting with my Hasselblad 500CM, my main camera at the time, loaded with Kodak 160VC film. I used natural light.
The location I most liked was nearby the Channel Four building, but not actually part of it. It was a distressed-looking concrete wall in different shades of light brown, and against it was a pipe covered with peeling white paint. David was wearing a white shirt, fawn trousers
