On What it Takes to Get Behind the Lens | A Drink with Chris Floyd

Idler editor Tom Hodgkinson chats with Chris Floyd on his 30-year career as a photographer and filmmaker.
Chris Floyd is a British photographer who decided at the age of 19 that he had no wish to go into a career of stable, office-based drudgery. Since joining his school photography club while in early double digits, the excitement of what cameras and lenses could do, as well as the places they could take him, exerted an exponential pull on his ambitions as he approached his adult years. Moving to London in 1990, Chris began working as a photographic assistant for different photographers, before launching his own career in 1993. “I wanted to do the kind of work that inspired and excited me as a teenager. That meant magazine covers, record sleeves and film stars. As my confidence and ability grew, I expanded that to more or less anyone who had done, or was doing, anything of note.” Today, Floyd is recognised as one of the most acclaimed photographers of his generation and has worked with A-list stars, heads of state, royalty (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in honour of their tenth wedding anniversary in 2021), era-defining musicians and artists: “I’m fascinated by talent and opportunity. To have talent is one thing. To combine it with determination, focus and movement is something else. People who can condense all those qualities into one package are magnetic. It doesn’t matter if it’s politics, music, science, philosophy or business. All I wanted to do was meet and be around those people. Maybe I could absorb what made their time on this Earth so worthwhile and apply it to my own existence. I am at heart an existentialist.”
This conversation was recorded as part of the Idler's weekly online event, A Drink with the Idler. The full recording is available to magazine and Academy subscribers. Visit the website to join: www.idler.co.uk/