Ten Questions with Pip

Pip is a British photographer, writer and director whose work has taken him from intimate portraiture to narrative filmmaking.

After years spent telling stories within a single frame, his practice has increasingly moved towards what exists beyond it - performance, writing, collaboration and the emotional architecture of a scene.

With his first feature film now taking shape, it felt like an interesting moment to talk.

For the latest in our Ten Questions series, I wanted to ask Pip about photography and filmmaking, working with actors, giving up control, trusting collaborators and what happens when people have to learn to see you in a different creative context.

1.

After spending so much of your career telling stories in a single frame, what did filmmaking offer that photography couldn’t?

A richer set of storytelling tools. Film gives you more ways into an emotion. A great photograph can stop you in your tracks, but a great film can get under your skin and stay with you for a lifetime. 

2.

When you’re directing a scene, are you still instinctively looking for the frame, or have you had to unlearn that? 

The instinct is still there, but I try to resolve the frame beforehand. Once we’re shooting, I’m much more interested in the performance and emotional architecture of the scene - the frame becomes secondary to the life inside it.

3.

As a photographer, you’re used to making the image yourself. On TWAIN, what was it like communicating that vision through a cinematographer?

I find it liberating. We speak the same visual language, so there’s a shorthand from the beginning. It gives us both freedom - the cinematographer can bring their own instincts, I can stay with the actors and the story, and somewhere between the two we find the image. 

4.

What has photographing so many actors taught you about directing them? 

That the best work happens when actors feel safe. Give them space to try things and permission to fail, and that’s where you find something extraordinary. My job is to create that environment and let them know I have their back. 

5.

You’ve spoken about photography being quite solitary, while filmmaking means relinquishing control and trusting other people. Has that changed the way you think about authorship? 

I don’t think of it as relinquishing control. For me, authorship is about clarity of vision, not control of every element. If the vision is clear enough, collaboration can only deepen it. 

6.

TWAIN feels darker and more psychologically charged than your photography. Does filmmaking let you explore something creatively that photography hadn’t? 

Filmmaking has given me a wider language for the things I’m interested in. My first feature filters the world of photography through a character’s psychology, so it feels like a convergence of everything I’ve lived and learned as a visual artist and storyteller. 

7.

After years of being established as a photographer, what is it like to be perceived as a beginner in film? 

I’ve been making films for as long as I’ve been taking photographs, so creatively I don’t feel like a beginner. What’s new is asking people to see me in a different context. That shift is exciting - and I’m looking forward to letting the work make the case for me. 

8.

Photography observes the world; filmmaking builds one. Has moving between the two changed how you see through a stills camera? 

Filmmaking has made me more aware that every photograph is really a fragment of something larger. 

9. 

Do photography and filmmaking demand fundamentally different ways of seeing? 

Photography taught me to look for the image; filmmaking taught me to look beyond it. In a photograph, light can carry the whole frame. In film, no amount of visual beauty can replace strong writing and performance. 

10.

What are you trying to become less interested in as an artist? 

Probably relevance itself. I’ve never been interested in trends. I’d rather make work that feels entirely my own.