Walking through Turin with his wife and creative partner James Ellis Deakins, Roger Deakins found himself thinking about Giorgio de Chirico. The Italian painter, one of his favorites, had drawn inspiration from the city’s vast squares, long arcades and unusual arrangements of light and shadow. Deakins was noticing the relationship for himself.
It’s characteristic of a man who has spent much of his life looking at the world, yet remains somewhat at a loss to explain precisely how he sees it. I mean, I still can’t answer that,” he says. It’s an uncommon admission from someone whose images have helped define contemporary cinema, from “No Country for Old Men” to “Blade Runner 2049” and “1917.” But for Deakins, the work is too dependent on the circumstances of a story, and the people telling it, to be reduced to any one method.
Technical considerations can be discussed, but the decisions that shape an image ultimately arise from something inexplicable. Perhaps his relationship with looking began as something more personal. As a young man, Deakins, born in the southern English resort of Torquay, discovered that the camera offered a kind of confidence, a way of approaching a world in which he hadn’t always felt comfortable.
Only in retrospect has he come to appreciate the significance of experiences whose importance wasn’t apparent at the time. It provides different ways of understanding the people and specifics of a story. There is no repeatable path, just as there is no formula for a good image.
James encourages the aspiring to experiment, examine their photographs and footage, and ask themselves why something works or doesn’t. It’s how they develop an eye, or what Roger calls a personal sensibility. Deakins, however, is less inclined to analyze his own.
When asked about the relationship of shapes and forms in his still photography, he struggles to explain what draws him to a composition. He tends to see the whole image, he says, rather than its individual elements. Ellis Deakins is more definite.
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