Nick Knight Is Building His Own AI

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0:34Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, August 21st. I've been interviewing Nick Knight for more than 15 years. This is our fourth in-depth sit-down interview. And at this stage, it's becoming something closer to a running conversation about how technology is reshaping fashion. This time around, I wanted to know where Nick is focusing his energy now. It turns out he is building his own AI datasets from scratch, photographing a model over and over, so the machine sees the world only through his references and never scrapes the internet for somebody else's.

1:20He takes his own still image and asks the AI to make it move, producing something that is neither a photograph nor a film. I also asked him for the advice he'd give to young image makers starting out today in the age of AI. Well, drop the past. Stop trying to be a 20th century image maker or photographer. Stop trying to work for magazines. Stop trying to pretend that they still have some relevance. Stop trying to look backwards, look forwards with enthusiasm. If you could compare rather badly the AI revolution to the industrial revolution, this is like sitting and standing in a field looking at the first kind of locomotive going by saying, so what do you advise somebody in the future?

2:02It's like, we don't know what's coming. It's changing so fast. This week on the BOF podcast, Nick and I get into what happened to the metaverse, how Nick believes AI is creating an entirely new medium, somewhere between photography and film, and what fulfillment really means to one of fashion's defining image makers. Here's Nick Knight on the BOF podcast. Nick Knight. Hello. How are you? Yeah, good. Thank you. How are you? Good. Welcome to the BOF podcast. My pleasure. Actually, I should say, I feel welcome to your podcast in my studio.

2:41Nick Knight: Yeah, my podcast in your studio. And luckily, it's a beautiful summer's day. It is. We've had a few of them this summer. Yeah. I think it's been like six weeks of nice days at this stage. Yeah. um so i was looking back this is our fourth sit down interview is it our first one was in 2010 yeah live streamed from the hospital club yeah remember that one marcus verner head filmed it exactly then we did one in 2018 right for the bof podcast then we did another one in 2022 too right also for the bof podcast so this is now not my fourth sit down in-depth chat with you excellent well how nice you want to come back and ask more questions you know what it feels like what this is becoming yeah is an extended conversation now over the course of 15 or so years about how technology is changing fashion.

3:47And that technological change and evolution is only accelerating. So rather than go back through your early career, which I normally do on this podcast, we've done that before. So if anyone's listening or watching and they want the history of this now legendary photographer then you should watch parts one two and three yeah um but i want to dive right into like everything that's happening you know the last time you and i sat down it was just as at the time that the metaverse was this word that everyone yeah was tossing about A very famous technology company from Silicon Valley actually changed its name to link itself permanently, it seems, to the metaverse.

4:46And at the time, you were quite bullish about it. You know, you were talking about perhaps there could be a time when we wouldn't even need physical fashion shows anymore. But the metaverse has kind of drifted away. Like, what do you make of what happened to the metaverse?

5:04Nick Knight: I don't think it's necessarily drifted away. I think the term's been to some degree cancelled because it had too many bad connotations. I don't think it helped that Mr. Zuckerberg named his platform after it. I think that put off a sway of the people. So I think it's still there. NFTs are still going. Avatars are still happening. There's a virtual world all around us, etc., etc. So none of that has gone away. It's not gone away in theory. And I know that there's small-ish groups of people that are still very interested in that space. But when I said it went away, fashion's interest in that space and like, you know, does fashion have a role to play in, you know, video games or creating NFTs or twins of their products?

5:54Like all of that seems to have gone away. Like the only thing that seems to be left is this idea of a digital product passport to help track a product. and there's all sorts of things related to that.

6:03Nick Knight: I don't know, you see. I think it depends on what you think is fashion. Fashion's just a desire, a certain way of being. I think part of our problem is we are slightly stuck in the 20th century. And that's coloring a lot of how we're viewing the 21st century. And I think all those things that we talked about are still very current, still very much happening. People still have an online identity, et cetera, et cetera. every change doesn't bring forward everybody. So I think there are people who hanker for even stuff they haven't lived through. So a sort of passe-east kind of, oh, magazines were great, or so nice to have something you can physically touch, and all those sort of things, which is a true feeling.

6:46Nick Knight: So there are those sort of people, and there are those people who have a vested business interest in keeping the status quo. So either power or money or fame or whatever it would be. Or their jobs. Or their jobs. Yeah. But that isn't a long-term view. That's a short-termism view of where we are. I think my excitement is that we are redefining our relationship to imagery. We're redefining our relationship to each other. We're redefining a way of talking. We're redefining a whole range of quite basic things that we've had for hundreds of years accepted were the best ways of doing things and probably the only ways of doing things.

7:27Nick Knight: And now it's completely changed. All the possibilities are there. And I think part of my excitement is it just feels like we're starting to see new things. We're not just rehashing. If you look at the state of fashion imagery now, it's very referencing the past. So here's another Avedon type shoot, here's another Bruce Weber type shoot, here's another, you know, but it's referencing 20th century photography. And that's fine. And, you know, having seen that transition from totally sort of analog to totally digital, I don't have that sort of desire to go back to analog. There's lots of talk around AI should be taken out of, you know, the way we work.

8:16Nick Knight: But I I don't know how you start to do that because AI is in everything. It's sort of funny. You see people commenting on Instagram and saying, you know, AI slop and all these sorts of things. You think, well, you're looking at it on a, the only reason you're seeing this is because you have an AI driven algorithm on an AI driven platform taken on a camera, which is using AI. Maybe you're using your iPhone or whatever. So your view is the metaverse is still something that exists. It's just not talked about that way anymore because the name changed. If we said metaverse is just a digital version of life, that's absolutely happening.

8:57Okay. One thing that you and I talked about way back in 2010 was Plato's Atlantis and the first live stream shows. That is one area where we have seen a continued engagement from the fashion world and fashion industry. But I'm curious, when you see the shows now, how they're live streamed, what's being live streamed, the creativity or lack thereof that goes into those live streams. How do you kind of make sense of the way that technology is now being used in the fashion industry versus, say, the way you and Lee McQueen imagined it could be used when you were doing Plato's Atlantis?

9:44Nick Knight: Well, I think Plato's Atlantis changed fundamentally how the fashion industry was formed. So before it was a closed circuit, a closed shop, you know, only 300 people would be invited to a show, nobody else would be able to see it. Blazers of Lance opened all that up and said to the public, come and see it as it's happening. So that fundamentally changed things. It changed the sort of distribution, schedules, and when clothes were made, and how they got out to the public, and when you talked about things. All that fundamentally changed, and literally from season to season. So that was a huge change.

10:16Now you've got everybody has their own phone, Everybody's got their own broadcast platform, et cetera, et cetera.

10:22Nick Knight: Everybody has the ability to be able to live stream themselves, to be able to review the show, which is great. It's just democracy. The democratization of fashion and the democratization of imagery is great. You know, prior to people having an Instagram or TikTok account and an iPhone, they had very little ways of even starting to articulate image. So people weren't used to expressing themselves through imagery. Writing was fine because most people had access to a pen wasn't always the case Most people like so so they could write but actually taking pictures to express yourself was quite you know Not so current right up until about 2010 So that's when things started to really change now when you go to show you have people Photographing sales filming themselves putting it out there.

11:11Nick Knight: They have an audience. They're being listened to etc. Etc. Etc it's all fine I mean in a way the bigger question for me is does it do are we pursuing the right things in life what do you mean fame, fortune, power those are the sort of things you will have heard this a million times you know this business is successful and you think why is it successful because it makes a lot of money that's not necessarily what success is Yeah. So I think that we are primarily being forced to to make things for money. Yeah. Everything is made to make a profit. That's why I started Show Studio was to make things because I love them.

11:56Yeah.

11:57Nick Knight: Not to make some money. Yeah. I've been very successful at that.

12:04Nick Knight: So I just it's just those fundamental core values, which I think are strange. People quest power and one understands why but then people who have it doesn't make them feel better or doesn't make them good I don't understand what the question the quest for power or fame or money is because I know people who are powerful I know people who are rich and I know people who are famous and none of those people feel that they are happier because of their power fame or money in fact a lot of them might be less happy because of all of those things but We are geared in the society which really pushes that.

12:42Nick Knight: Pushes the idea that you should go out and make something yourself and make some money and have power over other people. I don't think that's very nice. I don't like that. As a human being, I don't really like that. So part of the thing I find when you ask me about things that happened in the fashion industry, yes, it's sort of changed, but I look at people like Michael Stark or Sinead O'Dwyer of people who are doing fundamentally interesting things and are changing things. So those are the people I sort of gravitate towards. The bigger companies are great and still doing, you know, Jonathan Anderson's doing interesting stuff.

13:19John Galliano's doing amazing stuff, as always. You know, there's still people who make up. But to your point, you know, when those companies are now using live streaming, it's done with the goal of making money and showcasing product and getting attention and bringing, you know, in this environment that we all live in now where everyone's fighting for attention. It seems less like a creative output. It's like a very, very, you know, highly produced television commercial. Yeah.

13:56Nick Knight: I think that the thing doesn't quite, I get the question you're answering me, It doesn't quite deal with how I feel about the world. Yeah, what you're saying is that there's all of this money and fame and power and all of that. You've gone on red carpet at the Met. You step out from the bit nobody can see into the bit and everybody screams. Everybody screams when you get into your car. And you're thinking, what on earth is that about? You know, I don't understand red carpet. I don't understand fame. I don't understand the kind of the willful sort of desire to say you are better than I am And I'm not worthy of you are screen this mega.

14:40Nick Knight: I don't understand it Yeah, so I'm saying they're wrong and I get people get appreciate I appreciate the people get excited but you and I have worked with lots of people who are well known and they're fantastic But they are just as interesting as a person you meet at the bus stop if you care to engage Yeah, so everybody's interesting if you want to find interest within them. Yeah, and they're not interesting more than anybody else So everybody is the same. We are all as interesting if you care to look. And in a commercial world, which is based largely on business and fame and power, I don't find much coherence.

15:13I don't understand it. So I'm sort of pretending I do.

15:16Nick Knight: I'm pretending that these people are so important. You should get so excited because they're a Hollywood film star or singer or whatever it is. They're great. But so is the person you will come across at the 7-Eleven or the taxi driver. All those people are interesting. Everybody has a story to tell. And that's what's interesting. And so I'm slightly, I feel myself answering a question I don't really believe in the premise of what I'm being asked about. So, you know, there's a certain degree I'm really excited about the future. I really think we're at a fantastic time in art. We'll be right back with more on the BOF podcast.

16:24Anything else? How about setting a calendar reminder for next year? Metaglasses, available in more than 20 styles. Let's talk about that time because this was actually my main goal for today's conversation. What's next? Wasn't to like excavate the past. I was just quite curious on those two topics we've touched on before. So the AI revolution, I guess, we're just at the very, very beginning of it. if you think about what might possibly come. I would love to know, before we get into how you're thinking about it within a fashion context or within your professional, how are you, Nick Knight, human being, using AI in your day-to-day life?

17:14Nick Knight: I mean, you know, the simple answer is you can't avoid it because it's in everything you do. I know, so it's in the cameras and it's in the algorithms. But what are you actively doing to use these tools, if anything? Well, a lot. So I can now scan in a photograph and ask it to send me a poem. I can ask it to output a three-dimensional version of the photograph that I scanned in. I can scan in an abstract picture, an abstract I've created and I love and I have feeling for, not just a blurry mess, but something I really feel for, and ask it to make it real. To make it, no, not real, make it logical.

17:55So it's a different way of interacting with your work. And it allows you all these possibilities, which previously, you know, previously you could not take your still photograph and make it into a three-dimensional object. Is there specific tools that you use?

18:11Nick Knight: Yeah, a whole range of them. Which ones? Well, at the moment, it changes every day virtually, certainly every week. We make a lot of our tools here in-house. So a lot of the AI that we use is self-made, so we have our own data sets. So a lot of this stuff, you know, it's not somebody else's, it's Pro Studios. So we use our own tools. And sometimes that means using a bit of something and a bit of something else and cobbling it together and doing a version of it. But a lot of it is open source, so you can and not nicking anything. So it's very present in the work that I do. That doesn't mean that's the only work I do.

18:50Nick Knight: You know, there are huge things happening. I can't quite understand why people aren't more talking about them. For ages, there was photography, still image, and film. Now you can take a still image and ask it to move. And so you get this sort of hybrid, which is basically it has the same viewpoint that the original picture had. So the same emotional connection, the same lighting, the same coloration, balance, all those sorts of things. But you've asked it to move. So is this new mid state, which isn't a film because it hasn't come from a sequence of images. It's come from a single image. That's a new state.

19:30And that new state is being in part created by the way you prompt the AI to take that still image. So the part of the creativity is moving into the way you engage with and interact with the AI. It helps you take that image that's not a series of images, but turns it into a moving image. But putting aside the AI thing, that gives us a new thing. There hasn't been a situation where anybody with any artistic talent is really engaged in this new medium, which is moving still imagery. If you want to know, it hasn't got a name. As I said, you can take a still image and you can ask the AI to give it three dimensionality.

20:11Nick Knight: So then you have a sculpture, then you print out the sculpture, then you paint the sculpture, then you re-photograph the sculpture, then you have the sculpture output as a poem. Yeah, it's it's that's a creative journey of experimentation of testing new things, which I think we have to do I think if there's a problem with AI and there are people argue there's lots If there's a problem with AI It is we're just using it to mimic old things So we are using it to mimic an Avedon picture or a Jean-Luc chef picture or whoever it is But we're using it to mimic existing art. So film sound, whatever it is.

20:49Nick Knight: Because then, you know, it seems to be that's where most people are just gravitating towards. Oh, I can do a picture which will look a bit like you put in the prompts and it comes out looking like a Steve Meisel picture or a Mert Marcus or whoever it is. Because the AI has been trained on the creative output from the past. So people think that... That's why we make our own data sets. Yeah. So this is what you're... So tell us more about how you're, in a way overcoming that. So when you're creating a data set, what are you putting into that data set that enables you to think about creating something that's not referencing what's already been done, but creating something genuinely new?

21:27Well, the idea of referencing is a funny thing in any case. And we might want to unpack that a little bit. When you walk around a museum, go around the V &A, you are taking in Botticelli's and you're taking in 20th century furniture and you're taking a whole bunch of stuff. And they go into your brain and they sit around in there. And when you're creating, whether it's a painting, a song, or whatever it is, you subconsciously reference things you kind of like.

21:48Nick Knight: You know, you sing something, you think, oh, that sounds good because it reminds me of this, and I like that. So it's your frame of reference. AI does the same sort of thing. You just have a frame of reference. You ask me how we do data sets. It would depend on what we're using data sets for. So they're all different. So can you give me an example of one use case? Yeah. So we're using, I have to be careful on this, but we are creating data sets at the moment. And so we've done a conventional fashion session where I photographed a model lots and lots of times and lots of clothes, et cetera, et cetera.

22:19And that's my data set. And then what do you do with the data set? Well, then you put it into the computer and you kind of, you know, you ask them whatever you're doing, or it's a sculpture or it's a poem, whatever, to use that as its references. So it sees the world only through those references. So you have this isolated, pure data set that you've created. and then are you prompting the AI to do things with that data set like the sculpture or like is that I'm not saying make this look like Mogadigliani right so I'm not re-referencing another artist however the why I tried to sort of slightly open up the debate around or not debate I hold up the subject of referencing you we are all highly referenced yeah of course and it's all it's something that um I think one of the arguments that comes up about artificial intelligence is it's

23:05Nick Knight: plagiarism which it can be just plagiarism but there's no fun in plagiarism you know copying something is the least satisfactory thing you can do now which is what i mean by to yours your example if someone puts in a prompt and says make this look like a stephen mysell photo or a bruce weber photo that feels like a form of just copying or duplication how many mood boards have you seen for perfume ads that have a stephen mysell on them yeah but you say for sure yeah but every job that's being commissioned out there at the moment has a mood board attached to it. And every one of those mood boards will have a Mern Marcus, a Kramer Dean, probably one of mine, one of Stephen's, et cetera, et cetera.

23:44And we never, ever get asked, paid, consulted. And that's fine because I would rather be part of a common vernacular about how we are expressing ourselves in the beginning of the 20th century rather than not be part of it. Are you arguing that the backlash that we see against AI, AI created imagery, AI imagery that's referencing other creative people from the past, are you arguing that that's just kind of a double standard because we're all referencing? I wouldn't want to be so simplistic. And also, I'm not here to defend AI. OK. It's just something that I knew would come up in the conversation.

24:24And it's good to at least have a different perspective on that. But I think part of the problem is that to get great art, you need great artists, not just access to the technology to make imagery or make film, whatever. You need to have somebody who has got some great artistic integrity or great artistic vision or great motivation to do it. Nobody in their right mind would go into a photographic studio and press the camera once and go, I'm really happy with that picture, and walk back out again. You know, you spend hours trying to get a picture. And it's the same whatever you're using, whether it's Photoshop or AI or whatever it is.

24:59You spend hours trying to get something right. Nothing great happens easily. Everything takes work. I work for days on a single image with AI or without AI. I always had them. I used to print with BDI down with Brian Dowling. I used to do my color printing. We'd be there for three days doing one Jill Sander picture. Nothing changes. I'm still there for three days doing one picture. What techniques I use now are just broader. But it isn't a question that I just go, oh, fine, just copy this.

25:25Nick Knight: and I'm happy with that. As I was saying, there is no satisfaction in plagiarism. There's no satisfaction in copying an existing piece of work. One does it in the same way that a musician would teach himself how to play another piece of music, but that I think is a lot more credible than an image maker just copying a piece of image. So can I ask you the question in a different way? Because I'm actually genuinely very curious about this. because I'm a little torn about the debate and the kind of... Yeah, I think everybody is. Okay, I want to give you a very specific use case and get your take on it.

26:01Yeah. So when brands, fashion brands or otherwise, license or acquire the likeness of an individual, say a model, yeah yeah do you think it's a fair use of a person's image fashion model act i mean it's it's a it's a common topic across multiple creative disciplines right now it could be my physical likeness my voice it could be the way i move on a stage yeah like how do we protect some of the or should we be protecting absolutely how do we do that well let's take the fashion model um scenario a fashion model would traditionally not have a very long career yeah um sadly and i don't agree with the fact it's never a very long career it's fashion is so youth focused so it would be focused largely on people in their late teens early 20s.

27:07And that traditionally was kind of where most of the fashion models were situated. I don't really think it's fair that the possibility to extend the model's career throughout their lifetime in some sort of virtual sense is available while they shouldn't have access to that. But they have to be in control of it. The model has to control his or her own image. I have the rights to it. At the moment, they don't. So anybody, you or anybody else could go I make a virtual model of any of the fashion models that we know, and you could use that, and they have no control of that whatsoever. I don't think that's right.

27:42I think that the fashion models need to own their own digital likeness. Now, I've spoken to a lot of model agencies, and there is virtually nothing happening to make sure that happens. And that is partly because they know how to make money, and they're making money quite happily. So why should they They're going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in creating digital likenesses models they already have. It's much just easier to stop working one and bring another one in. There is no real engagement with the future. Yeah, they have a vested interest in the current working model, right? They have, because that's how they make money.

28:16But the model, there needs to be legislation written and insisted upon and enacted to protect people's digital likeness, whether that's their voice or whether it's their physicality or whatever. So then you have a model who can say, well, actually, you know, I don't want to appear as my 18-year-old self. I really want only my digital likeness to appear as my 40-year-old self or 35-year-old self or whatever it is.

28:38Nick Knight: And they should have the control over that. But that system is not set up. And we haven't seen such a glorifying, such a wonderful modeling industry. the history of modeling industry is fraught with quite unpleasantness in terms of mismanagement and in terms of not protecting the people they're supposed to be looking after etc etc etc now that's not true of more model agencies, there are fantastic model agents out there but there's also a lot of not very good practice should we say and there has been traditionally so I don't see giving the model more power over their own image as anything other than positive.

29:15Models should have the power and the ability to control their own image. And the moment that's not happening. We'll be right back with more on the BOF podcast.

29:31So let's take a different lens on AI. If you're just starting out and you're really interested in image making, and you know that you have the kind of tools from the past, but you also have these tools that are still developing. What is your advice to someone who's like trying to figure out what that future vision of future image making might look like. Well, drop the past. Stop trying to be a 20th century image maker or photographer. Stop trying to work for magazines. Stop trying to pretend that they still have some relevance. Stop trying to look backwards, look forwards with enthusiasm. I mean, that's, you know, I can't, you know, say we were at the beginning.

30:09If you could compare rather badly the AI revolution to the industrial revolution, This is like sitting and standing in a field looking at the first kind of locomotive going by saying, so what do you advise somebody in the future? It's like I build television sets of us. You know, it's kind of we don't know what's coming. It's changing so fast. Very hard to advise anybody in a sort of pragmatic way, like get this camera and do this thing. But in a philosophical way or a principled way. In a philosophical way, I would not use the past as a sort of, you know, thing to measure yourself against. You have to measure yourself against your own emotions about what actually gives you pleasure.

30:43that doesn't mean happiness and it certainly doesn't mean fame money or power so I think you know you have to find fulfillment in life and that would be my thing something that makes you feel like you exist and you are fulfilled in what you're doing and I don't care whether that's clerical work or whether it's modeling and it doesn't matter I don't think it should and I think one of the things we are seeing quite happily is that there is this sort of generalist mentality

31:07Nick Knight: where people aren't just a photographer they are not just a painter you can do lots of different things and that's just in the arts you know but you can also be politician you can also have a voice you could you know there are lots of different possibilities for us to express ourselves in hundreds of different ways but before we were all channeled into are you a scientist are you an artist and that that division and that's changing yeah that division between the arts and science which has been happening since hundreds of years is now breaking down i think that's fascinating yeah so that's what i would be excited about now i was speaking to somebody who was in their early 20s.

31:44Nick Knight: You know, I think just find the excitement in life and follow that. And don't get worried about, you know, what techniques you're using. And certainly don't try and copy anybody from the past as if that's going to make you feel fulfilled. As I said right at the beginning, plagiarism is the least fulfilling action you can take as an artist. So it's really about finding the sort of motivation. And it doesn't matter if you paint one day, sculpt the next day, sing the third day, dance the fourth day. You know, just express yourself. Just find some way that makes you feel that you are in touch with yourself and with the world.

32:17Nick Knight: And you are doing something that makes you feel alive and has purpose. But I wouldn't want to be more specific than that. I'm still, I mean, I joke that I'm a young photographer, but I still feel I'm just starting. And I think that's probably the most important thing for me, is that I feel this is just the tip of the iceberg. Incredible what we can be touched with. We know nothing about the world around us. I mean, nothing. You know, we talk about AI and, et cetera, because it's a different way of seeing the world. X-rays are a different way of seeing the world. Thermal photography is a different way.

32:48Nick Knight: You know, there are so many different worlds rotating around us that we are not part of. I find it very tricky to talk about AI without sounding like I'm defending it. Of course I'm not. It's as bad as any other situation, as bad as any other way of creating things, or as good as, or better. So there are different things. And we talked a little about data centers. Data centers can be built in a way which does not harm the environment around them. But they cost more. It comes down to capitalism, comes down to greed, comes down to money, et cetera, et cetera. So then you have to look at why people are putting other people's safety, you know, to one side because they want to make more money.

33:25Nick Knight: That's the problem. It's not the AI. It's the person owning a data center. You know, these things can be done and should be done so that the people around them, you know, do not suffer from their existence. You know, if we can, it's a hackneyed thing to say even now, but if we can solve some of the awful illnesses that have bedeviled us through AI, which it looks like we are doing, whether it's Alzheimer's or cancer or leukemia, whatever it is, you know, surely that's positive. You know, if we can find a better way to communicate, that's a positive thing. you know, there was some silly journalist somebody who criticised Instagram as a platform of selfies but hey, that's brilliant the fact that somebody can express themselves with their own image, what the hell do you think artists have done forever that use their own image as a way to express themselves and also the democratisation and the ability democratisation of image making is fantastic when writing first came along, it was only the religious as scribes who were allowed to do it.

34:32Nick Knight: And then there was quite a change. And was it Martin Luther who banged, stuck it on the door of the church in Germany? The Bible became a sort of, everybody could read it, everybody could write. We didn't start to say at that point, no, no, no, no, we mustn't allow people to have pens because they'll write horrible things. It was a thrust to allow people to express themselves. I guess it goes back to what you were saying at the beginning, though, in service of what, right? And I think part of the criticism of some of these social media and digital platforms is that it's created this fame-obsessed culture.

35:07We have had a very fame-obsessed culture forever. The fame is becoming more sort of scattered, if you want. That's Warhol's there. You've got 15 minutes. Now you've got 15 seconds. But I would just throw that out the window.

35:21Nick Knight: Fame is a false goal. Money is a false goal. Power is a false goal. You will not find happiness in any of those things. And you should actually be, in my opinion, you should not be questing happiness. Happiness is a state of delirium. You don't want to live in a state of delirium. It'd be like being drunk all the time. So happiness is great because at other times you also have sadness. You have fear. You have anger. All of our emotions, you don't live in a state where you're just angry all the time or just hungry all the time or just happy all the time. You want the rich sort of, I don't know, gamut of emotions.

35:55Nick Knight: So they all feel stronger because they're juxtaposed. And I think second to this business is successful because it's making money, you hear, oh, I want to find happiness in my life. And I'm thinking, really, do you? Because it'll be awfully dull. Just happy all the time, like some sort of benign idiot. Sorry, that's not very nice. Happy all the time doesn't make for a fulfilling life. So when you wake up in the morning, Nick. Yes. With your esteemed career and your success. But that doesn't mean anything to me, Imran. You know that. Wait, what do you, if you're not seeking happiness and you're not seeking fame, money or power, like what are you seeking?

36:31Fulfillment. And where is that coming from, that fulfillment? My interaction with people in the studio, my interaction with my wife and my family, my interaction with strangers I meet in the street, my interaction with people I'm working with, it comes from the human interaction to all the people I do. And that can be online, it could be virtual, it could be real. I'm thrilled.

36:48Nick Knight: Every time I walk through the door here in the morning, I am thrilled. That's amazing. I'm thrilled to see my assistants. I'm thrilled to see my staff. I walk downstairs and I go past the screens and every screen has something amazing on it. That gives me a lot of, but it's not just that. It's also the fact of feeling that I'm alive, that I'm doing something. And I don't really care. It's not I want to be, I've never seen my work as trophyism. I don't see like the best picture I've ever taken on a pedestal and blah, blah, blah. I see it as a communication, a conversation. any more than you would go back and say, you know, that was the best thing I ever said.

37:25Nick Knight: Here are my top 10 best sentences. You know, I don't have that with my work. But people push you to that. So, you know, could you send us your best pictures? What was your best picture you've ever taken? And I think, well, it's the next one because I don't know what it's going to be yet. Yeah. We're almost out of time. I want to know the books that you would recommend that anybody who's interested in building a career in fashion, technology or otherwise, books that people should read? I read two books in lockdown. One was James Lovelock's No Seen. My book I founded a lot of my thoughts on was Alvin Toffler's books from the 1970s.

38:11There's Future Shock and Third Wave. They also propose a future. This is from a man written in the 1970s, and what he wrote in the 1970s is all coming true. In varying degrees. He talked about a great societal change, and he said during that great societal change, it's not going to be a smooth road. There will be kind of rocky mountains that you've got to cross. But we will get there. And I very much firmly believe, I'm a huge optimist about the future. I've absolutely, we evolved towards a better state. So James Lovelock, Novosin and Alvin Toffler, Third Wave, would be my three books. There's a very good photographic series, but one shouldn't read it anymore.

38:50It's very good photographic series by Time Life that

38:52Nick Knight: do kind of the dark room, the print, all that sort of stuff, which are great. I don't want to be a photographer. I don't want to have photography as the main medium I use. And I don't want to encourage other people to do that. Photography is great, but it's not the only medium to record feelings and emotions and life and imagery. Yes, certainly not. Photography really was very well defined by a set of parameters up until the middle of the 90s, and then all the parameters get shot out the window, and it's a different medium. And so we should stop trying to say, we're photographers, we're not. I don't use photography.

39:23Nick Knight: I use whatever it is my iPhone does. Well, who knows what new technology will have emerged on the scene by the next time you and I have a chance to sit down. As always, it was incredibly stimulating to hear your point of view. It's very nice to speak to you. I can only answer questions. I can only answer questions well enough from that. I'm trying to say you've asked an intelligent question, so I can try and give you an intelligent answer. It's what I'm trying to say. Well, thank you. I'm not imagining much on my vocabulary or my linguistic skills this morning. So sorry about that. Thanks for having us here at Shoe Studio.

39:57My pleasure. Thank you.

40:07Thank you.