Eye Candy: DAN WILTON

Working in the world of press, you have to sift through a lot of press shots. A LOT. And most of them are pretty bait, if we have to be honest/brutal (a DJ in sunglasses acting “wacky”; a DJ looking vulnerable and wistful on the beach; an emcee looking Matrix-esque with a sword, etc). Though they tend to give us endless office banter, it’s rare that we stumble upon a press shot that genuinely moves us. And that’s why a photographer like Dan Wilton is such a treasure – every photo he takes rumbles some kind of emotion within: it fills us with childlike wonder, it leaves us restless with artistic hunger…it stupefies us.

As he’s worked with many of the artists that have played at our disco over the years (Starkey, Rusko, Fake Blood, Radioclit, the list goes on), we decided to have a pit-stop in his imagination for a moment. Let your eyes feast as Dan talks us through some of his images...

(click after the jump for a little interview, and a pretty awesome picture of a naked Spanish dude on a bike)



Dizzee rules. Really nice, funny bloke.  This is him telling me about a great handjob he'd had the night before. Shot at his studio for The Stool Pigeon cover.



Theo's (aka Fake Blood) a complete horror nut. We'd talked before about old horror films for inspiration for the shoot but when it came down to it, it was all about the blood. He brought litres of his own home made fake blood with him. I really wanted to dunk his entire head in it but after trying it out on his arm we realised it'd dye his head red for a week. Shame. The studio was a bit of a mess by the end.



It's not water. It's just spit. Rusko has amazing spit.



Went along with Invasion to a gig in Paris a while back. We spent hours, actual hours, hunting for Jim Morrison's grave. It wasn't really worth it when we finally found it. This grave was waaaaay better.

I love Invasion. Check out their new video:




This is Max from Wolfgang with my cat Ron. About two days after the shoot Ron went missing. We plastered East London with posters of Ron for the next five weeks so you might have seen this before. We wandered the streets at night with tins of tuna. Eventually, after five weeks we found him. He'd been living with a policeman, little shit. Anyway he's back - we're planning RonFest to celebrate his return, should be amazing.



Ungdomskulen are the funnest band to shoot ever. Super nice Scandinavian dudes with amazing shorts and amazing facial hair. Winning combination.



Went for a nice relaxing day at the seaside a couple of weeks ago and Orlando (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs) just wouldn't stop posing in his dinosaur outfit. So we threw some rocks at him.


Hey Dan, how would you describe your art, to the uneducated?
Wow, art makes it sounds very grand. I don't really think of myself as an artist really. I guess I'm a portrait photographer most of the time.

How did you get into art? Was it something that you were always into, or can you pinpoint a moment of realisation (of sorts)?
I trained to be a biologist. Didn't take long to realise that wasn't for me. After that ended I got an office job in London. Wow, that really wasn't for me. But throughout all of that I'd been taking photos in my spare time of the people around me. That's what I loved doing so it just seemed pretty obvious that I should just do that - forget everything else.

Can you give us a little insight into your techniques?
Um...I have no idea where to even start. There aren't any tips or tricks really. A lot of the time I shoot very simply, not much bells and whistles. Carry a camera with you all the time, that's a good one.

Who are your inspirations (be it artists, musicians, authors, film directors, philosophers, etc)?
There's a whole bunch of photographers that I look up to that I guess have definitely influenced my work. The greats like William Egleston, Richard Avedon and Henri Cartier Bresson. I love Martin Parr. And Ryan McGinley. And Anders Linden. And Ron.

Where do you go for inspiration?
I get a ton of inspiration from creative blogs like It's Nice That and Ffffound. There's so much amazing work going on all round the world it's impossible not to be inspired. Only problem is sometimes it can give you a bit of an inferiority complex.

Any upcoming exhibitions you’d recommend?
Ryan McGinley's exhibition 'Moonmilk' is opening today (10 Sept) at the Alison Jacques gallery. He rules, go check it out - http://www.ryanmcginley.com

Have you ever been to fabric?
Yeah course. I always, always get lost.

Check out Dan's work on his site and blog:
http://www.danwilton.co.uk
http://www.danwilton.blogspot.com