The manipulation of Mr. Robbie Williams

Photo by James Dimmock

At the time I was spending a lot of time experimenting with Photoshop. Bear with me here, it was the early 2000s so it wasn't as simple as it is now! I approached Nylon magazine with the concept of turning one of England's biggest pop commodities into a living doll. Partly to pander to my need to justify buying rare Japanese action figures but mainly to make a reference to how Rob had been packaged and manipulated as a Pop toy from the minute Take That appeared. 

I talked Rob through it and he was into the idea so we spent a day shooting in an East London studio. Once I had edited the film I went back into the studio the following week, recreated the same lighting, and posed various obscure Japanese action figures in identical poses. The 2 frames were then combined in post. I am sure today a swift sentence or two with Chatgpt would give the same result in moments,  but this was the semi-analog days so it took hours!