“I saw a photograph by Lee Miller when she photographed a picnic in the woods in France in 1937. It is a great photograph and it also says a lot about their way of life. It was a way of life I sort of aspire to but I couldn’t, I never felt confident of being like. Because I was a solicitor and also because I had my own inhibitions. But I love the combination of the representation of their lives; and the fact that it was a good photograph to look at. From that moment I was into photography. The photographs are real and show you an exact representation of what is there but they are unreal because they are never frozen in time. Unless you can capture something of somebody in that still, some part of them, it is never an accurate representation of what they would be, it only gives a sense of them. That is why I like photography.”
“The first photograph I ever did was a nude. I didn’t know it was going to be a project at that point. It was an advert in Time Out, placed by this guy who wanted to do a book of real nudes as opposed to professional models. He said he would photograph the first 100 people to walk the door. So I had to be there and I had to be
the number one which I thought was pretty cool. He photographed me and I thought it was great fun.I thought it was great, I was going to have this naked picture of me taken by a professional person up on the wall at home; but my children said no way. I think the first photograph will be exactly as the last one. I chatted a lot to the photographer, we got to know each other, he photographed me, he showed me what he was doing. About a year later, it evolved when I had a few photographs and I wrote to the first person on the Internet, the same email that I wrote to you. lt was only then I realised it was becoming a project. Then I contacted every one who had a camera, I didn’t care about their work. But maybe fore the last three or four years, I have contacted only people whom work I particularly like. I want my photograph to be taken by this person who sees in this kind of perspective. I find that really nice to achieve that, to see the photographs on the Internet to get to the point that you are being photographed by that person. I love the shoots so much, I love the shoots and at the end you get this photograph and it is like a little present to me. It is a memory of that day.”
Tim Andrews has been photographed by 396 photographers so far during the project Over The Hill. Pictures by Auriane Defert