Alistair Baird

1959 UK

I went through school expecting to be a geologist but I doodled compulsively in science lessons, played the cello, sang in the choir, acted in plays and watched clouds make faces in the sky, so I scraped into university. A geography professor addressed the first year students saying that 70% of what we would learn would be found outside the academic life at university: that suited me fine, so I spent more time in theatre, learnt to rock climb and picked up my first camera.
I should have studied art at school but Careers Advice never mentioned you get a job taking photographs, so I had to go the long way round to find out! A lucky break in 1982 gave me an assistants job working for the photographer, Michael Hall, who told me on my first day that photography was 90% business, 10% taking photographs. I learnt the business of photography from him and went back to college to learn the theory. Then I bumped into a young artist, Rebekah Tolley and from sharing our lives together for a number of years, I began to appreciate art. I changed direction and managed a photographic laboratory where I could learn more about printing.
Now I make photographs that need to be made and that draw on the strands of experience from m...

Artrix, Bromsgrove, UK September 2007,