The images that made me

How much does imagery help shape the person we become? Which photographs are the ones we remember as changing us in some way––creatively, personally, professionally––or simply as marking the passage of time?

We ask industry leaders, artists and experts in visual culture to talk us through the five photographs that have brought them to where they are now. Think Desert Island Discs, but make it art.

Lydia Pang is the self-styled Frankenstein creative who has built a career on being a misfit. As creative director for some of the world’s most forward-looking companies she has perfected the art of storytelling through inspiring visuals, now bringing that home at the helm of her own business, creative strategy studio MØRNING, of which she is co-founder.

Her relationship with photography began in childhood, and has followed her ever since, shaping her personal style as well as her vocation. Here are the images that made Lydia.

Candy Cigarette, from Immediate Family, Sally Mann [1989]

My mum [Darklight Digital contributor Sonia Pang] is a photographer, and while she was studying she wrote her dissertation about Sally Mann and the maternal gaze. From a young age I was exposed to this image, made aware of its beauty and complexity. My mum took similar jarring portraits of me in order to explore the subject in her own work, so I grew up very much in front of the lens, aware of it and its power.

I’ve always been obsessed with the uncomfortable tension inside imagery, the dynamic between subject and author, and I think this image and being my mother’s subject birthed that awareness and intrigue. I remember spending evenings after school in the dark room while she processed photographs of us, I remember being cold outside while she took my picture but wanting to please her and be good at it, I remember Sally Mann’s books always on our coffee table, and I remember when my mum got a first for her dissertation, feeling proud.  

An image comparison from Ways of Seeing, John Berger [1972]

When I was a teenager, my mum gave me this book as a gift. At first, I struggled to get into the writing, but I used to flick through it and was always struck by the visual essays. I would spend time picking over the choices he’d made. These visual essays contained no words, just image comparisons silently screaming side by side. These sharp insights and witty juxtapositions had me hooked before I had the language to really describe why, pre-art history degree, pre-theory nerd, I just adored the way they played with perception, power and sex. I loved how they confronted you with your own gaze, the gaze of the author, the subject and her agency, the societal gendered gaze and voyeurism, the layers of texture felt endless and really sparked a curiosity in me to understand more about the power of images to define and destruct who we are.

I still have the same copy she gifted me on my desk.  

Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray [1930]

I struggled at first in university, it took me a few tragic years of masquerading as other people and pretending to be interested in mediaeval manuscripts before I truly found my home in the salacious, abject mischief of the surrealists. Desire and drug fuelled, the play with perspective and reality, with flesh and fantasy, was everything I had been hoping for when signing up for my degree in Art History.

Man Ray really encapsulates this time of discovery for me, from finding my point of difference in an intimidating peer group to unearthing my sense of personal style [I do still love a crisp black lipstick!] I found it so inspiring the way his work straddled commercial and art, that infiltrate-from-within mindset. I have prints of his work all over my house today as a reminder of that spark moment when I found my style and my edge.

From Rubbish, Dipping Sauce, Grass, Peonie, Bum, Maisie Cousins [2019]

Maisie was an internet friend. I was deep in my first big shiny ad agency job, succeeding, but seeking something more to satiate me creatively. I remember seeing her work and feeling jarred with the type of inspiration that makes you feel sick with jealousy, nervous with anticipation to be involved, greedy to know more.

So, I reached out and offered my help, we hit it off, I became her agent for a time, we worked with some greats like Björk, and are still friends today [now she’s with a far more legit and fancy art agent].

But this image was the one that did it, that made me reach out and say, let’s make stuff together. From the fluffy bum hairs to the naughty petal stuck on the nail. It reminds me of being in my twenties, hungry to collaborate and beautifully naive to all the complexities commercial art brings. It was a sweet, sticky ignorance!

Abuse Of Power Comes As No Surprise, one of Jenny Holzer’s ‘Truisms’ [1982]

I spent five years living in New York and it was during that time that my career really started to define and deepen, as I started playing with satire, self awareness, and using brands as a material for culture to play with. Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and the Dada movement really cracked open the potential brands––and the industry I’d chosen––had to shape culture.

This image encompasses that punk spirit I brought to my career, when I realised brands could be powerful vehicles for good and that we message makers and storytellers hold such immense responsibility, I became fearless and made work I am proud of. I love this piece because of its brutalist sentiment, utility font, its overt directness, hiding in plain sight, it’s a trojan horse of truth. Sometimes when I feel untethered from my why, or from my brand or my anchor, I look at it to redirect me back into my guts.

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