To Be Different: Celebrity Photographer Andy Gotts Visits China

By staff reporter ZHANG HUI

Every day, Chinese people are bombarded with dramatic and even moving photography. On their daily commute, billboards plastered with photos of awe-inspiring landscapes lure citizens to explore the nation's natural beauty, and online news portals draw readers in with images capturing the most exciting events of the day. They are also all too familiar with celebrity photos, peering out at them from the glossy magazines crowded on urban China's ubiquitous newsstands, so one would imagine that they would be unexcited by yet another snap of a well-known actor or actress.

The unusual celebrity portraits by British photographer Andy Gotts, however, offers something a little different, presenting Hollywood stars in a way far from their usual glamorous screen images. In one Orlando Bloom, stands with the pants of the sharp suit he's wearing at his ankles, exposing a pair of underpants adorned with the Union Jack. Another shows George Clooney mid-laugh in a pirate hat, while a whole serious captures the usually prim Morgan Freeman pulling faces. It's funny, but you'll wonder what's going on.

Andy Gotts

What the 40-year-old photographer is most adept at is to explore the truest and most natural state of celebrities without any makeup and embellishment afterwards. He is noted for his black and white portraits of hundreds of Hollywood and British stars.

For his influential unique style on celebrity portraits, the National Portrait Gallery (London) holds a selection of his photographs in their permanent collection. In 2009 Gotts was honored with the Fox Talbot Award. In 2012, Gotts was appointed MBE in the New Years Honors. In addition, he is also a former President of the British Institute of Professional Photographers.

Invited by the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy, from April to May, 2012, Gotts gave lectures in China's major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to share the story of how he has struggled for success in the photography field.

"I know Chinese art is rising in the world. If I can spend a couple of days and explain the way I work and how I've done what I've done, I can help a few students or encourage a few students to follow the path that I've done. I think China could offer more to the global community in art," he told China Today in an exclusive interview.

Sticking to Your Dreams

Gotts dreamed of becoming a photographer from childhood, but in secondary school his head teacher convinced him to seek a more practical career. Instead of pursuing his dream he studied cooking, but he soon felt unsatisfied and unhappy. So he changed paths, and entered a two-year photography course.

"I've always been into celebrities," Gotts confessed, but at the end of his first year of college he still wasn't sure what he wanted to specialize. This changed in 1991when a famous British actor Stephen Fry gave a lecture in Gotts' college and he got his break.

In the Q&A at the end of the lecture, Gotts stood up and asked whether he could photograph Fry when he was finished taking questions. "He was quite taken aback, but said 'yes,' " Gotts told China Today.

"He gave me literally two minutes. It was quite short, but the two minutes changed my life," Gotts said. This brief session gave Gotts his first experience of the power that a portrait photographer has over his subject and inspired him to pursue celebrity portraits as a career. "He was famous, but doing what I wanted him to do. That's why I started. He was interacting with me, and being silly with me as I asked," Gotts said.