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Taylor-Bramley moments

Photo
call in
Dubai
When he first came to Dubai, commercial
photographer David Taylor-Bramley thought
everyone in national dress was a prince. A couple
of years later, he is concerned with keeping up with
the fast changing skyline as well as the rise of the
next generation

text Shalini Seth

photographs David Taylor-Bramley

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 Ricardo Cinalli: Alexandra Palace 1986 
“A grumpy, eccentric but very talented painter from Argentina commissioned me to do this
at Ally Pally. I met him through a friend. I went down with a film cameraman to watch his
installation in Alexandra Palace. He was up on the scaffolding. He didn’t seem to like the
constraints that the commercial world placed on him.”
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P hotography is not a hobby for David Taylor-

Bramley. “I am the only one who turns up without
a camera at any [family] event,” he says.
 Unless, of course, he can make eye contact (via
his camera) with Shirley MacLaine on the very first professional
shoot of his life, even as he is being physically escorted out of
the room. “It was my very first job after college, the press call for
her one-woman show in [London’s] West End. I was working for
a press agency and all the other photographers were with daily
national papers. There was very little space, so after a few minutes
her [public relations] people started removing anyone not with
the dailies. I kept taking photos, so they grabbed both my arms
to escort me out. While I was being physically ejected, I called
her name, saying: ‘Here, Shirley’. And she looked straight at
me,” Taylor-Bramley says, rather proudly, showing a photograph
that seems almost staged with the star looking straight at you
from the midst of a host of paparazzi.
“Needless to say, that frame never went to the press agency! I
clipped it out and kept it for myself. It is something you have to
do sometimes,” he says.
That first frame illustrates Taylor-Bramley’s technique.
“Photography is about problem solving,” he says. “It is about

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drawings by the sculptor Henry Moore of refugees sheltering in the
He met a Scotsman in a pub,
liked the way he looked, and
persuaded him to come to
the studio the next day to be
shot in full Scots regalia
Cave People: UK 1988 
“I recreated one of the scenes from ‘War Requiem’ based on the
underground during the Blitz.”
making something happen in front of the camera, to organise
and create and lay it out.”
For one advertisement, Taylor-Bramley shot more than
a hundred takes to get it just right. “It was an ad for Canon
digital cameras – shot on a Fuji! – for which we set up a small
trampoline down at the [Jumeirah] Beach Park for the model to
jump on. It required a 20-pace run-up on soft sand and he did
it 120 times with me directing him to lift his right foot higher
or raise his chin the next time. I must say, he was very patient
and very fit!” When it comes to style, even though he believes
true originality is a very rare commodity, Irving Penn, he says, >
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is one of the most influential photographers of all time. “I had
a chance to ‘do an Irving Penn’ in the photo that I call New
Guinea Tribesmen: London 1988. The guys were on a cultural
visit to England and were taking part in a documentary about
body piercing and cicatrices [tribal scarring]. There were about
15 of them and they arrived by mini-bus exactly as they are seen
in the shot except that they had their head-dresses in their laps.
They were also demonstrating their cooking technique, which is
basically: dig a hole, throw in some hot coals, throw in a dead
pig, cover with palm leaves, fill in hole and come back tomorrow.
It did taste good though,” he says.
Making sure that you create situations “just so” might be a
matter of style. Even so, a horse on its coffee break might become
an ideal ad hoc subject and part of his personal portfolio. He calls
it Yawning Horse. “At the end of a long day under the lights for
an ad shoot, this horse wanted his trailer,” Taylor-Bramley says.
As a commercial photographer, his work speaks to us every day,
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Taylor-Bramley at work shooting
for an airline in the UAE
from a billboard advertising a luxury airline or a fast car. But
when he is on holiday, the camera and the rest of the equipment
does not necessarily travel with him. “I am not much for pulling
out the camera for every available opportunity. You have to
make a decision, say I want to do shots of a beautiful hotel. I
would get up early and treat it like any other job. Otherwise, I
would be just wandering around. I wouldn’t really want to take
photos while on holiday. That is what I do every day,” he says.
That does not stop him from thinking about it, even in a pub.
He narrates how he met a Scotsman in a pub, liked the way he
looked, and persuaded him to come to the studio the next day to
be shot in full Scots regalia.
While he confesses to a fondness for photographing people,
Taylor-Bramley has an eye for royalty, even if they are not present.
“When I first came [to Dubai], I thought everyone looked like a
prince. From the outside, it is hard to imagine – when you see
local people in local dress doing business – just how world-class
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Shirley MacLaine:
Dorchester Hotel 1982 

it is. It is both, dignified and intimidating, in a way. There is a

certain gravitas,” he says. Taylor-Bramley came to Dubai when
he decided that London was getting too crowded. “In London,
it was becoming a very crowded industry. A friend of mine
suggested I come here and take a look at the market after he had
heard me whine on the phone. I came with my wife. She went
to the beach and I went out with my portfolio. I was so surprised!
In London, you cannot get past the voicemail. You could do six
months of just going and meeting people. Here, when they say
come in for a meeting, they mean in an hour’s time. So I came
back and made arrangements to start a company,” he says. 
It is interesting to see a city from a photographer’s eye.
While the professional in him admires the pace of work, the
Girl Portrait: Morocco 1981
photographer’s eye tries to keep up with it. “People still cannot “This portrait was shot in a tiny ‘studio’ in a remote village in the
believe that a place like Dubai is so fully high tech, compared to mountains south of Tangier during a month of travel in 1980. We
were taken there on a donkey cart from Asilah by the son of the local
London, which is sort of crumbling. I think Dubai is a far more chemist, whose task it was to photograph the local schoolchildren.”
technological city than London is. A lot of photographers >

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Sir Lawrence Olivier: UK 1988 

“This was shot in a makeshift studio on location at a derelict lunatic
asylum in Kent during the filming of ‘War Requiem’ by Derek
Jarman. “I was brought in to do photography on the sets. As a
personal project, I asked to be allowed to set up a studio.
“Olivier had come out of retirement for the part and died a few years
after. The BBC had heard he was working and sent a crew down to
the set whilst I was shooting the portrait – directing Sir Larry while
being filmed is one of the more stressful jobs I’ve undertaken, but
my mum was very proud when it was shown on TV.
“He was absolutely charming. He was old and frail, and he was not
wheelchair-bound – that was part of the character he played
in the movie.
“The other people in the photograph are quite famous now. Tilda
Swinton played the White Witch in ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ and also
starred in ‘The Beach’ with Leonardo DiCaprio.

come to Dubai for the architecture. It is a common destination

“From the outside, it is hard for some stock photo libraries. But you have to keep up with the
skyline. There are so many ongoing projects, and in two weeks’
to imagine – when you see time it is transformed again,” he says, speaking of his current
local people in local dress project of creating panoramic images of the city.
What he wants to recreate next is a collection of portraits
in business – just how world- of Dubai and its heirs. “I have done my camels-and-sand bit.
I am planning a project on the inheritors of the new Dubai. I
class it is. It is intimidating, want to photograph people of both generations together, as
one generation gives way to the next – essentially a collection
in a way. There is a certain of portraits of fathers and sons or daughters shot in a stylised
and contemporary way. I want to know what their passions
gravitas” are – houses, cars, wildlife, farming in the desert… It all began
when it occurred to me that the pace of change in Dubai is so
rapid. Within the space of a generation, the whole country is
transformed. The lives of the old generation would have started
out so differently.”

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