Julian Lennon
speaker
357 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Julian Lennon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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That was it. You didn't have TV screens or the iPhones or anything to watch anything. So once the movie was done and you'd have a bit of food or whatever, that was it. Most people would go to sleep. I would always be twitching, of course. So I'd be looking out the window and staring at the clouds. And I realized that what I was seeing was literally just moments. And they would never be again.
They would be gone, fleeting. That's it. Whatever that cloud, that light, that shade, that shadow, the color, the beauty of that, the enormity of it as well was… So I started taking pictures of clouds.
And I just thought that at these moments, while everybody else was asleep on the plane, I'd be sitting there looking out, either thinking about everything that was on my mind in the world, yeah, or I'd be thinking of nothing at all. And I'd just be at peace. And again, like that moment in Colombia, just... absorbing everything that I found to be beautiful that was surrounded me.
So clouds were my thing at first. That was my moment to either get away or think about everything. But mostly that kind of element of freedom and space and just, am I the only one seeing this? Everybody else is asleep. Everyone's distracted. Yeah, so I started taking...
pictures of clouds and then I knew a few rock and rollers so I started taking pictures of those too and then one thing led to another because I'd go on these trips to Ethiopia with great organizations like Charity Water and again Kenya and South America and a number of other places I just would take a camera with me
Because I have to confess, and I've said this a few times, I have the worst memory of anybody I know. Absolute terrible. Absolutely terrible. And so, in a way, this was taking a camera with me was to catalog what was going on. And it was only when I got back home, I put them on the screen and I go, oh, that's quite a nice picture. Oh, that's not so bad.
What if I just did this, that and the other? And so I started making collections of my journeys, which eventually became my website and my photography. You know, I've never done a paid gigs as such and I've never used. Nothing that was natural light or present light. So I've never set anything up. I've always tried to, again, get that moment, whatever it was.
And then I had the opportunity – I know I've gone in a bit of a roundabout circle. But the publishers came to me earlier this year saying, do you want to do a book? And I'm thinking, well –
yes and how do i do this and and because a lot of people don't know i'm a photographer in any way shape or form i i thought okay can i can i make it a retrospective can i can i make it all the stuff that i'm interested in you know because often as a photographer or even a musician you get well what is your favorite thing what do you take pictures of what does your songs about Everything.
Why do they? You know, the idea of being pigeonholed in any way, shape or form horrifies me. Me too. So this was a way for me to show my work. And it was a bit of a nightmare, too, because I had decided with the onset of this...
exhibition I'd been offered in Venice at this museum alongside Helmut Newton no less why don't I try and marry the two so I have the book come out at the same time as the exhibition Now, that meant working on the book like an absolute fruitcake, madman on crack.
I mean, we were doing nine to 12 hours a day virtually because he was based in the guy who I was working with from the publishers was based in Berlin. And I was where I was. So this would be virtual back and forth trying to figure out. What makes a photography book great? It was something else. We did it in a couple of weeks. It was insane.
And the hardest job of it all was because I used to shoot anywhere between 150 and 100 pictures for a collection. I was never one of those that had like a limited edition of four or ten pictures on deck. Again, this was just a catalog of the work of what I'd seen and the charity stuff.
But then I had to, you know, in those moments, I had to learn how to make a collection of 50 pictures, five pictures. I'm going, well, how the hell do I do that? How am I going to do that? So it's being able to tell the same story of 50 pictures in five pictures. The problem is you know about the other 90 pictures. Well, of course. And as I keep saying, they're all my babies. So, you know, it's...
What it makes you realize is, OK, what's the truth? What's the really, really, really important message I'm trying to get across here? What am I trying to say? What am I trying to express here? Because half the time I just feel like a messenger, really. I'm just capturing something and I'm sharing it.
And the reason I say that is because once I started getting into this, a lot of the earlier emails I had were from disabled people or people that didn't have money that couldn't travel around the world. And they would say, well, you're bringing this to us. By taking these photos, you're showing us your journey and where you've been and these indigenous tribes and this and that.
I'm going, that's really quite special. That's really, you know, really quite special because you're taking on another role. Because I try not to... In whatever profession I've done, whether it's documentary work or books or children's books or music, I never try and shove things down people's throats. I just present things and you take what you want from them.
So the idea was to put a book together that just showed the world as I'd seen it through those journeys that I've been on. And what happened was... that when we got the go-ahead for this exhibition, which was only earlier this year, I was thinking, how am I going to do that? And I decided to make that a retrospective too. But how do I then chop that many pictures down to that of this exhibition?
Again, funnily enough, the book became my guideline. So what I'd learned in the editing process of putting the book together, I now looked to that and the book to see how I could present the work in a larger scale in a museum, which was bonkers. And this all happened this year. So it's like... Okay. All right. I'm going for the ride. I obviously want it.
But when it all hits you at once, it's quite something else. It's been a full-on, full-on busy, busy year. And there's been music involved too and other documentary film projects, which you'll probably hear about next year. So it's probably been, weirdly, one of my busiest years.
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