Two Author Portraits - Part 2

September 2020

On the face of it author Andrew O’Hagen is a complete opposite to Gabriel Krauze. He is editor at large of Esquire magazine and The London Review of books and ‘Mayflies’ is his 7th novel.

But Mayflies is about his youth and his close friend from the time, who on his death bed 30 years later, told O’Hagen to write a novel about him and their hedonistic weekend in Manchester. A story of friendship and loss.

I photographed him in his home in Primrose Hill, a former artist studio mews house, which is brilliantly decorated. House and Garden did a shoot with us here recently he tells me.

The room we shoot in is full of colour and objects - nearly overwhelming in its impact.  The colour matching excites me and slots into my ‘more is more’, maximalist photography mood. I start asking him about the blue ceiling above the dinner table and he says that an artist painted it over 3 days, lying on his back stencilling the details. I’m obsessed and decide that it must be in the background of at least one shot.

There is lots of art on the walls and an extensive drinks cabinet, which links me into an article of his I read in my research, about the colony rooms in soho, and his late night drinking and socialising there.

He suggest a shot with a single malt, as drinking, he assures me, is gonna come up in the interview.

We chat a lot and shot a lot, and I even have a bit of whiskey at the end.

The Observer decide on the wide shot against the green wall with the library - he is an author after all - taking in the full symphony of the rooms stuff. I suggest he moves over a bit so that I can see the small busts of Dickens and Burns. He’s impressed - ‘Most people don’t recognise both!’

I foolishly admit that I saw them when I was setting up and their names are written on the base.