You may not have heard of him but Frazer Harrison is one of the world’s most productive photographers. As the entertainment photographer for Getty Images, you’ve undoubtedly seen this Englishman’s work in magazines, the Internet, and just about anywhere there’s a celebrity event.
A picture is worth a thousand words. It’s a saying as old as the very first photograph itself - or its more cumbersome cousin the daguerreotype - yet the undeniable popularity of the phrase lies in its absolute truth. From the 20th century onward, it has been through the unequalled medium of photography (literally meaning ‘drawing with light’ from the Greek) that wars have been documented, beauty has been decided, victories have been recorded and history has been told. While television, the written media, the Internet and movies tell a story using time and narrative, a well-shot photograph gets to the heart of it in an instant. The camera delivers immediate gratification, just what the modern world craves.
It can be argued that all great photographers are actually photojournalists. No one proves that better than the charismatic, charming and communicative Frazer Harrison, the man whose images we admire and behold regularly, without even knowing it. Through various institutions in his past and these days via Getty Images, founded by oil fortune heir Mark Getty, Harrison has been photodocumenting our world’s experience, one unforgettable image at a time.
The man behind the camera remains elusive and mysterious, even after a pleasant afternoon spent with him during this past September’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York City. Don’t get me wrong, Harrison generously shares quite a lot of his work experiences, but guards his private life - what is confirmed is that he lives in Los Angeles, is married and has a four-year-old daughter - with dignity and more than a fair share of ambiguity. Ask him about his daughter and he’ll quickly redirect the conversation to his first front page photo - hundreds of half-marathon runners on a bridge in Lincoln, England changing their course due to a closed train crossing - or will describe at length his favourite assignment during the early years at the Daily Mail: “Germany - I worked with the 21st Lancers Tank Regiment and that was really cool for me. I went there to do a feature on the withdrawal of the troops; they even let me drive a Challenger tank and those are not things you easily get the chance to do.”
What is irrefutably obvious about Frazer Harrison is that he is a man never afraid to speak up. His reputation as a seasoned photographer at Fashion Week is impeccable “He is a really nice guy, very professional, very well-respected” Rodin Banica, one of his fellow colleagues in the photographers’ pit confessed before I sat down with Harrison. But that said, the man behind the camera has never missed an opportunity to go after what he wanted most. From his first internship at the Lincolnshire Echo, where he asked to be assigned to the photo department after barely two days of numbers boredom in accounting, through to his work in Los Angeles for a British paparazzi company “Yes, I was a paparazzi and that is a completely different world altogether!” Harrison has turned five words: “Give me a job, please”, into his effectively artful mantra.
Harrison knew at an early age that he loved photography, a hobby that his working-class parents encouraged further with the purchase of a Canon A1 for little Frazer as a Christmas gift. The first photograph he remembers taking was at age 12, during a class trip to an English Stately Home, he immortalised black swans on a lake with the historic mansion in the background. His efforts won him the class competition. During his years as a photojournalist, he covered the British troops pulling out of Münster, Germany and the British Army fighting the IRA in Belfast - where he experienced a mortar bomb attack on the convoy he was travelling in. From that particular time in his career, a single, poignant, extraordinarily telling shot remains, of a child touching a soldier’s gun in Belfast.
When in New York to shoot Fashion Week, which descends upon the city twice a year, he admits “I just tunnel vision it. But we do have a lot of fun here, I socialise with people I haven’t seen in a long time.” As far as physical preparation “You need a box to stand on and then it’s all a state of mind”, although he jokingly adds something about not eating spicy foods the night before.
His personal style is Kenneth Cole and Calvin Klein, while he finds flamboyant brand Duckie Brown, which recently showed “underpants which were a cross between a nappy and boxer shorts” outrageous. But ask him about modern elegance and he is quick to come up with names like Kate Beckinsale, Angelina Jolie and Megan Fox. His one elusive subject has been Charlton Heston, because “he was a real movie star”. Harrison was thrilled when he had the chance to photograph Kirk Douglas and about Audrey Hepburn and Clark Gable he says “I would have loved to have photographed them but I live in a different generation. My Clark Gable is Brad Pitt, or George Clooney. Even though I may not realise it, I am creating history.”
These days, Harrison’s name comes up as the image caption to nearly all A-list events. He is a staple at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors’ Guild Awards in Los Angeles, the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas and, of course, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in NYC, as well as Miami. His favourite assignment among them is “the Country Music Awards in Vegas. It’s fun, the people are great to work with.” He cherishes a photo with Dolly Parton, which was used by his hometown newspaper on the occasion of Harrison’s wedding with the headline “Ex [Lincolnshire] Echo Man to Wed”, which lead everyone to mistakenly believe he was going to marry Ms. Parton, only adding to his already mysterious mystique. His ideal assignment would be “to do something like what Dave LaChapelle does. That would be amazing.” Ever humble he continues “my photographic knowledge is limited to the photojournalism genre. I have never stood at high end photography and maybe one day I’ll discover how to use a camera - really!”
