Craig McDean is a British fashion photographer and filmmaker originally from Middlewich, near Manchester. Craig first started taking pictures of his rocker friends as a teenager, before moving to London to assist Nick Knight. Craig’s first cover of i-D featured a ripped up Polaroid of Mica Paris for The Born Again Issue in November 1990. Something went wrong with the film and Craig had to pick the pieces of Polaroid out of the bin to create the cover, which he describes as “genius”. McDean has since shot a massive 23 covers for i-D, as well as being a regular contributor to Vogue Italia, British Vogue, W and Harper’s Bazaar. McDean’s advertising campaigns include Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein and Jil Sander and his inspirations are “everyone and everything”. McDean published his debut book, I Love Fast Cars, a collection of photographs celebrating the world of drag racing in 1999 and in 2011 published Sumo (read interview here) a collection of photographs he took in 1993 in Tokyo observing Sumo wrestlers. His favourite i-D covers are both ones he shot, Stella Tennant for The Performance Issue in December 1995 and Shalom Harlow for The Subversive Issue in June 1995. McDean is currently based in New York.
