Sir Frank Lowe

What is the first still image you remember?
The original Doyle Dane Bernbach Volkswagen ad with the headline Lemon.

Your professional life has been heavily involved with film. What has the most power - a single still or the moving image?
The single still. It is because if we think of images, whether it is of our parents or the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, they are always stills.

What was the first photograph you acquired?
The photograph of [Isambard Kingdom] Brunel, by Robert Howlett. It just struck me as an extraordinary image of tradition meeting the industrial revolution.

You have an impressive photographic collection - is there a theme?
The theme was to build a history of photography, so it really runs from Fox Talbot to more recent times – virtually all of it is black and white, which is interesting in itself.

Which contemporary photographers do you consider to be future ‘master’ calibre?
I think one name comes to the fore - Andreas Gursky. It would take me the rest of this page to say why.

With an advertising background - does a successful image have to have a narrative content?
No. One of the best campaigns I worked on, with Alan Waldie and Duffy, was the Benson & Hedges surreal campaign. Which I think was the first time surreal images had been used in advertising.

Is photography really the essential art of our time?
No. And I do collect paintings though looking back not as many as I wish I had collected.

Which are the key photographs you treasure the most in your collection and why?
I have been lucky to have worked with so many of the great photographers - Bailey, Donovan, Snowden, Penn, Avedon – but when I recently looked at all the photographs, I did come to the conclusion that Penn is truly the master and so have collected all the Penn’s that I have and put them in my library.

Do you own a camera and/or take photographs yourself?
Yes – I’ve owned an Olympus since they launched the Trip and we did the ad with David Bailey. I still have an Olympus though now it’s the new Tough. I’m not really a good enough photographer for very complex cameras.

If we could magically transport you anywhere, to any point in time, to take (or art direct) a single photograph - what would it be?
It would be a photograph of Michelangelo, aged 24, creating the Pietà. To me no explanation is necessary nor would it be possible.