Penny Martin: What made you decide to take up photography; Presumably an expensive activity for someone who was then living in a squat?

Donald Christie: In fact it is possible to buy 35mm camera and lenses, processing gear and enlarger for modest amounts of money, £300 could easily cover most of it. It is a process that you can retain 100% control over. It is a real experience (analogue) as opposed to an illusory digital one. Also there are loads of funded facilities, studios and darkrooms etc, in London. I did not really start colour photography until I started to get my expenses paid.

Early projects I undertook included documenting the installation of the '20th Century Italian Art' exhibition at the Royal Academy. Photographing the likes of Merz, Kounellis and Vedova installing their own work. A commission from The Independent to photograph the 'real' indigenous population of Dungeness was a project that took weeks to complete. Some of my first truly commercial commissions were working with Peter Saville on reportage based projects that included photographing New Order and Paul McCartney.

Penny Martin: You've said you enjoyed the freedom of working commercially to support your personal projects. Was it ever a concern that commercial pressures would jeopardise the political nature of your reportage?

Donald Christie: Working commercially is about supporting the ultimate personal project - myself and my family. My other personal projects went on hold for a few years whilst I concentrated on finding stability.

If beliefs are truly held then it should take a great deal more than commercial pressure to compromise them. I feel as though I have always retained an overtly political edge to my negotiation with commercial art. My current video landscape work (eg. Pylons) has a more obvious political slant.

Penny Martin: Please describe the difference between how you originate your ideas for the two separate bodies of work?

Donald Christie: Time scale is the main difference. An art based project may take years to come to fruition whilst a commercial project, normally, only has days. A commercial artist can have a style or technique that may follow an 'applied philosophy of intent' but much of the product is one of reaction and application rather than of instigation and inquiry. That's two different structures. The method by which images and concepts are applied and viewed are substantially different.

Penny Martin: Is fashion a creatively nurturing industry?

Donald Christie: It is when it promotes individuality and originality, unfortunately this is not always apparent.

Penny Martin: You have recently returned to education to pursue film. Why?

Donald Christie: I wanted to immerse myself in an academic environment, a place where research and theory operate without any external pressures. I wanted to re-establish, within myself, a healthy state of inquiry and intent.

Penny Martin: Can you say how making motion imagery differs from capturing stills?

Donald Christie: "Photography is a feeble technique in the sense its instanteity compels it to capture time only piecemeal. The cinema (by contrast) makes a molding of the object as it exists in time and, furthermore, makes an imprint of the duration of the object" Bazin.

This quote simplifies a complicated Q and A. The cinema referred to is an open, general title for moving, time-based media - it is not a reference to the, predominantly, dramatic version that now dominates our screens.

Penny Martin: The four films in the Monographs series for SHOWstudio consist of 'Sustained moments' where a still is brought to life, as opposed to constructed narratives. What kind of reaction are you trying to elicit from the viewer?

Donald Christie: These are real moments, not sustained moments. Time as the flow of a river (Heracticlus/Bergson), seemless and unrepeatable, observed for long enough it can be seen that the banks of the river, too, flow with time. I do regard my videos as having a narrative structure/content. I feel this is inherented in time-based media. By its nature it has a beginning and an end. I have an opposition to the dramatic version of narrative that pervades our sense of film.

"Realising that broadcast TV is a bombardment of sound and quick changing image, I thought that by reversing the identity of TV as an entertainment medium and turning the whole process of viewing into a minimal experience, one might provoke a more engaged response from the viewer" Tamara Krikorian 1975. Avant-garde film maker/feminist/landscape artist

Nature should be experienced as a constantly evolving organism, it is not 'nature morte'.

Penny Martin: Do you see any crossover between your film work and commercial photography?

Donald Christie: If the figure is removed from many of my (fashion) photographs what remains is a landscape. I thought about going back to the locations and re-recording the landscape. There is a natural symbiotic relationship between the two - they inform one another.