At nine o'clock, he had an appointment with Steve Jobs at the former Apple headquarters in Cupertino. While waiting, a public relations person approached him: "I just wanted to warn you that Steve hates photographers." That 2006, Jobs had just sold Pixar to Disney and was completely immersed in the launch of the first iPhone. Photographer Albert Watson (Edinburgh, 1942) had an hour to take a portrait that would illustrate Fortune magazine's list of the most powerful men in America. When Jobs showed up at one minute to nine, Watson told him that he would only need half an hour for the session, a concession that satisfied the demanding and rigid Jobs.
Watson was looking for a simple photo, without artifice, as if it were a passport photo. "I told him to imagine that he was sitting on the other side of a table with four or five people who disagree with him. But he knows he is right. Then, he replied, 'Easy. It's what I do every day'," recalls Watson twenty years later in his New York studio. In the end, he only needed 20 minutes. And that photo of Jobs with his hand on his chin and a slight smile - the one of someone who knows he is right even though the rest of the world hasn't realized it yet - has become one of the visual icons of this century. It was one of Jobs' favorites, Apple used it as the official image for the requiem after his death in 2011, and it was the cover of the monumental biography dedicated to him by Walter Isaacson.
This heterogeneous Watson, the photographer of a thousand faces, is unleashed in the monumental book-object Kaos, published by Taschen: 400 pages with his best snapshots, almost six kilos in weight and a price of 125 euros, far from the luxury edition of a thousand copies launched in 2017 (at 2,000 euros per volume). "Kaos is like a collage of pieces I have done since the 70s. In a way, my work is a bit like Instagram: when you swipe to the next image, you never know what will appear. You're looking at a girl in a bikini and suddenly you switch to an astronaut suit and then to a monkey with a gun," Watson compares on the sofa in his studio. Outside, everything is covered in snow, and he dresses as always, in his photographer's uniform that he unintentionally established: all black (technical reasons: avoids reflections and more; aesthetic reasons: neutral and discreet), with his cap turned backwards (he used to do it before rappers turned their caps) and his timeless metal round-framed glasses (like the ones Jobs wore, by the way).
How did this Scot born in the midst of World War II, the son of a boxer and a nurse, become one of the most respected and sought-after photographers, rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood jet set and the top models of the 90s? "I have always been kind to people. I would arrive in the morning smiling and greeting: 'Would you like to sit for a while? Are you ready for another shot? Would you like a coffee?' If you are kind, you always get a better photograph," he says with his usual modesty and discretion. Perhaps that is his secret: Watson is a likable guy, capable of winning over Jobs, a tough Clint Eastwood, or even Alfred Hitchcock. "That photo changed my career," he admits. It was 1973, he had just arrived in Los Angeles, and Harper's Bazaar magazine commissioned him a portrait of Hitchcock for the Christmas issue, in which his recipe for cooking a goose appeared. It was going to be the typical image of a goose on a Christmas table, with Hitchcock behind. But Watson invented a scene as simple as it was striking: "Hitchcock loved to cook. So I suggested he grab the goose as if he were strangling it and I put a red ornament around its neck. There was a simple but effective concept behind that image. That's what makes you remember it." That young Scot was not a typical photographer: he had studied Graphic Design at the College of Art and Design in Dundee and film at the Royal College of Art in London. His gaze was already cinematic, detecting frames/photographs on the street, that decisive moment of Cartier-Bresson. By the time he took his first fashion photos - some truly monumental - his father's reaction was that of an entire era: "It's a funny job for a man..."
"Everything has changed a lot. Today, fashion no longer exists, but style does. Clothing is now global. In 2025, I finished a project in Rome and photographed many young people. But it was a bit disappointing. They looked like those in New York! In other words: they wear Calvin Klein t-shirts, Ralph Lauren jackets, Nike sneakers, or Gap cargo pants. The same type of clothing you would find in Times Square or Los Angeles. It's not about globalization but about Americanization," he says of the series Rome Codex, 200 images he showed last summer at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Far from considering retirement, Watson continues to think about photographs: "It's like going to the gym."
And what does he think of the instagramization of photography? "I like that an iPhone makes amateur photographers better. But there is a big difference with a professional photographer... I do believe that some young photographers are a bit lazy, they are not interested in the past and lack knowledge. The other day I argued with a guy who thought ripped jeans were an invention from five or ten years ago... When I mentioned that the Sex Pistols were already wearing them in the 70s, he didn't even know who they were... You know? Sometimes, with Americans, you mention Almodóvar and they have no idea who he is. He is one of the great filmmakers of our time!" he sighs.
His book Kaos opens with Jobs and ends with an anonymous black and white school photo: the class of 1948. An eight-year-old Albert appears, with a tie, sitting next to a girl, Elizabeth. Her family moved away, and at 17 they met again in Edinburgh, without recognizing each other. He invited her to a jazz concert and... "If it were a movie, you wouldn't believe it," he admits. Today, they are still married.