DURING THE past few months, one of Albert Watson's most iconic photographs has been splashed over the pages of every newspaper, magazine and website in the world.
It's a black-and-white shot of Apple founder Steve Jobs, a striking image of the businessman before his body began to show the physical decline of cancer. Wearing his trademark black turtleneck sweater, Jobs looks at the camera, his chin resting on one hand in an obvious allusion to Rodin's The Thinker.
The photograph is a fitting epitaph for a person the world has called 'the Da Vinci of our time', one that encompasses his influence, his intelligence and his intensity. But the power of the image derives as much from the person behind the camera, as the individual in front of it.
'Photography as a modern medium, even more so now, has the ability to connect to the average person very quickly; the memorability of the image is key,' says Watson. 'Memorability, power and iconic quality is what I'm looking for, but don't always achieve.'
For a man who has shot some of the most iconic images of our time, that's a remarkably modest view.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1942 with only one functioning eye, Watson might seem destined for the medium of photography. He studied graphic design and film before discovering photography in the 1960s: unlike those two similarly creative fields, photography offered Watson not only a sense of immediacy, but complete control over the finished product.