RAM SHERGILL
Everything Beautiful
Rajesh Punj
Immediately after the shoot, Shergill walked the half distance from
Treacy’s studio to Isabella Blow’s apartment, let in by Blow herself he recalls
she was on the telephone with the American Vogue, and she was labouring
over the details for a major forth-coming shoot.; ‘the temperature of the
bath water was mentioned, the quality of the steak, sparkling water over
still, and the models she had assigned for it’. Taken by surprise, turning
to Shergill, who felt a little out of place, she asked him if he wished for a
small biscuit whilst and also offered him a handful of money; he took the
pale biscuit but declined the money. Blow shuffled him to the door after
the briefest of conversations and suggested they stay in touch, and it was
then that Shergill flattered her ghostly ego by requesting to photograph
her in all her pomp and ceremony. Blow professed her ugliness time and
time again, and told him to photograph her sister-in-law Selina instead.
Dutifully some weeks later, Shergill contacted Selina Blow, a designer, who
duly obliged to let him photograph her collection.
It was a surreal situation for a young Indian photographer, yet
at no time does Shergill confess to feeling out of his depth. Meeting
Philip Treacy and Isabella Blow in the same afternoon, being invited to
Ziad Ghanem campaign Ryo Araki
photograph Selina Blow, and then more significantly, Shergill
goes onto mentioning meeting the late British designer
Alexandra McQueen in the basement studio adjoining Selina
Blow’s. Shergill appears to emphasise his lack of awareness
about who any of these people were at the time, which made
it much easier to be among them, and to talk freely of his
desire to photograph them. McQueen, he says, was scruffy
with his trousers loosely hanging from his waist, his shirt
torn and undone, with tight cropped hair he appeared almost
threatening. Selina introduced him as ‘Alexandra the Great’.
In an awkward conversation McQueen declared his dislike for
Shergill’s photographs of Selina’s collection, and showed him
a portfolio of the work of the American photographer Joel-
Peter Witkin, which proved to be some of the most macabre
images Shergill had ever seen. Two decapitated heads in a
bleached out black and white photograph, pressed together
as one, a naked figure wrestling a dog in another; they were,
for McQueen, the basis for his work at the time, and it proved
quite a culture shock for Shergill to have been privy to the
inner ideas of a future messiah of fashion. Remember Shergill
had declared himself drawn to beauty, and here, he was being
exposed to everything quite the contrary
