A short interview-style conversation from Chris Collins' YouTube video 'Are GREAT Artists Always Dictators?' (July 16, 2025) discussing artistic control versus collaboration. The guest contrasts their collaborative portrait/documentary approach with Guy Bourdin’s highly controlled, auteur-like method (likened to Stanley Kubrick), discusses compromising versus imposing vision, and recounts striking Bourdin anecdotes (e.g., attempting to dye the ocean).
Chapters
I was never, like, trying to evoke Guy Bourdin in any way, because I was. Stylistically, my work is very different from his. I think he would, like, conceptualize his images perfectly before he even got on set. And then he would build the set, do the fashion, the makeup, the hair. Everything was, like, in his brain before he took the picture. And I work more like. I think I prefer collaboration, you know, with someone. I kind of have an idea of something, then I go on set, and then we work it out with the team. Sort of like a film director. And he was like a film director. Like, Stanley Kubrick is like a film dictator, which, you know, it takes those people, they make amazing stuff.
When you think about your style and the amount of control, he clearly had a lot of control. And.
Kind of his point of view was he was the only one that was going to have the idea. Everybody else was in service of his idea, in a sense. What do you think about that as an artist or as a photographer versus a style of more collaboration?
I think both of them work. Both of them work, and you can get great results both ways. I don't know if the dictatorship style of making images still exists or not in today's age. I prefer the collaborative aspect of it because it's like, basically, like. I think I'm a harder film director because I think I would prefer to take someone's better idea and put it in the picture, you know, than the one I had from the get go. I'm like, yeah, let's try that. That's a good idea.
What do. What do you think it says about somebody like him who has the better. Like, he has the better idea.
Yeah, I think, man, I think his idea was just on a different level. So nobody even. Nobody working with him is, like. Doesn't even knows what the hell's going on in his brain, to be honest. He's just on a different level. Like, his concepts are just. How do you come up with that?
It's brilliant.
Like, you don't even see the photo of just. There's a photo of a field, and there's a telephone pole, and there's a girl behind the telephone pole. You just see her shoulders. Like, that is just so punk, you know? I would have never had that idea.
Go to the purple one. So the other thing that I think is so interesting. Yeah, the purple tab. Is he literally tried to dye the ocean blue for a picture.
Yeah.
Like, he wanted to dye the ocean blue.
Yeah.
Like, in a sense, you're like a godlike figure in Your belief in what you're doing, that you want to change the world to fit into the thing you're trying to do versus adapt. There's no compromise in that sort of mindset. Do you ever feel like you're compromising?
Yeah, for sure.
Where does the line of compromise and collaboration?
Well, I have certain people that I kind of talk with about that stuff. Like, I have a friend who sort of manages me, and I run stuff by him. And he has a really good. He kind of. He's a great. Like, he just knows what's cool and what's good. So I'm like, do you think I should push this that way? And he's like, yes, for sure. Or he's like, no. So I like people as. Use people as a sounding board, you know, whether it's a good idea or not. Because in the person I'm talking about, I just. I know he makes my work better when I listen to him. So it's, you know, again, collaboration. I guess I need someone to, like, banter back and forth about ideas, and then it's like, then it comes.
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be, like, gay and not need that?
Yeah.
Like, you're so sure about the thing that you're doing. Just get out of my way. You're either in or you're out.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel that way about film projects. I'm like, no, this is the way 100%. I know it needs to be this way in photography. Since I'm not really. I'm not really a fashion photographer. I'm a portrait photographer, which is a documentary photographer. So I kind of. I need a little bit from the other person in order to make the picture. So even if I have, like, a preconceived idea, it will most likely change a little bit when I photograph the subject. I guess for. Because guy was like, you know, shooting models mainly. So it'd be like, you lay here, turn your leg this way. Done. That's the shot where my work is, like, you know, in service of something else Often, I guess, you know.
It would be fun to play God more often.
I know I proposed to you recreating that dolly picture with the cats, but do bulldogs where he's throwing the cats?
