Malcolm Venville

Malcolm Venville, 45, a London-based director and photographer, was born in Birmingham to profoundly deaf parents.

I arrived into the world of advertising by accident. My two friends left school and went to art college, and I went to Land Rover as an apprentice in a gearbox factory. Often I would get up to go to work and they would still be awake from the night before, looking at books about painting or sketching. I realised that studying painting was a lot better than standing by a lathe all day long. My friends lent me their drawings and I sailed into art college because the tutors thought I was some kind of prodigy. Unfortunately, I couldn't draw, so when I was rumbled, I moved onto photography.

Photography came easier than drawing. Arranging the world within the 35mm aspect ratio started to captivate me - so much so, that I gave up playing soccer. I read Cartier-Bresson's manifesto and it became my guide for living.

In the college darkroom I sneered at other students who cropped their images - it was something I simply refused to do. It's almost laughable now, but nothing except a 50mm lens and a roll of Tri-X film interested me.

The 1970s was a great decade to grow up in, and I was happy absorbing everything around me. Muhammad Ali was in his prime; Birmingham City had Trevor Francis; Coppola, Scorcese, Alan Clarke and Dennis Potter were everywhere; The Jam were chart toppers; and Lennon was alive.

As my parents were profoundly deaf, my grandparents urged my parents to speak to me rather than use sign. But because sign was their natural way of communicating, what resulted was a base form of communication that ultimately created a gulf between us. They lip-read me and if things got difficult I finger-spelled. But profoundly deaf people have sharp eyes and read your body language quickly; they can detect your mood and your emotions simply by the way you stand or the position of your hands. This is the way my parents understood me or dealt with my feelings. Your body language screams your self. On a practical level, I would translate television for my parents and deal with visitors. I became their ears.

Being around deaf people as a child gave me a head start in photography because of the way that they use their eyes to perceive the world. When I look at snapshots my parents took of me as a child I'm amazed at the graphic purity of the compositions. Now I understand that a deaf person taking a photograph has 100% visual commitment.

Taking photographs was also great practical therapy for me. An introverted and pathetic boy was now asking people to do things: "Could you look this way, look that way, but don't smile. Imagine this, or can you try that? Could you stand, could you sit still, could you scream or can you recall a feeling of anger? Can you try to do nothing?" All these instructions that a photographer gives his subject helped me to transform myself. Being a photographer gave me a ticket to look into people's lives, and the result was that I grew up.

I wanted to be a photojournalist. During the miner's strike in 1984, I was taking pictures on the picket lines. I kept getting chased by the police with truncheons. One time I had to spend a whole freezing night up a tree avoiding them. My friend worked in a studio in London and I decided that sweeping the floors there was a better prospect. At night I would creep into the studio and take photographs using the beautiful wooden Deardorff plate cameras. I'd 'borrow' the film and Polaroid.

Stealing materials was important for a young, passionate photographer. I became adept at it. I think I was unconsciously left wing, a welfare state lad who had never encountered privilege and was ready to use any means necessary to become a photographer.

The welfare state gave me everything and for that I'm eternally grateful. Thanks to the Labour Party of 1945, scumbags like myself were given a slim chance. But there's a conflict over my national identity, because I loathe the class system and the monarchy, yet I'm thankful for the liberty I possess.

I used to be a fan of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, but when I discovered what a puritan he was, I was depressed for months. For a long time I cherished Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and the Weimar Republic, but now I've settled on the fact that Benjamin Franklin is the man to watch. The founding fathers of the United States took the idea of England and perfected it into a theoretical Utopia.

Anyway, eventually I got a job assisting a landscape photographer, and I began to travel around the world working on advertising poster and print work. Advertising, I learned, suited me. It was controlled and idea-based and I enjoyed the process of executing a layout into a photograph, although becoming a photographer was a difficult and painful process. In the first few years I would shoot pictures for nothing and I had creditors chasing me, but eventually the awards came and agencies started to give me budgets.

In terms of early inspiration, Dave Dye introduced me to work from DDB in the 1960s and CDP from the 1970s. So I saw a lot of great TV commercials - especially the work on Volkswagen, Hamlet and Heineken. The Guardian Points of View spot was a key moment for me; I realised that advertising could be taken seriously.

When I started out in this industry, there was only one director in commercials that meant anything to me and that was Tony Kaye. He redefined the business. Then Jonathan Glazer added intelligence. I'm grateful to both. I'm also indebted to Tom Carty and Walter Campbell for teaching me how to edit. They were the creative team par excellence and I'm not sure I'll ever meet such a force again. The work meant more than anything to them; they were the Brian Clough of advertising.

The motivation for producing my book, Lucha Loco came after I went to Mexico City to shoot a few commercials. One night I overheard my Mexican friends saying "Where shall we take the gringo tonight?". They decided on a Lucha Libre fight. I was struck by the colour at the event, and after some research I learned there was no photography that documented the wrestlers. So I embarked on this crazy project. I have always struggled to shoot colour, simply because of the laws of simultaneous contrast, but in Lucha Libre colour is free and spectacular and I wanted to celebrate that.

In the West, colour is denied. Architects and designers abhor it. I think it was Johannes Itten who criticised India's over-abundant use of colour as weakness. Even Degas described black as the queen of colour.

I'm a sucker for sight gags - anything from WC Fields to Peter Sellers. Borat also fascinates me, because he reminds me of Chaplin, and one of my earliest memories is of watching silent movies with my father. Those movies spoke directly to him as a deaf man. Buster Keaton is also huge for me; I've not seen anything that surpasses the subtlety of his humour; the way he combined amazing sight gags with zero performance.

When it comes to industry awards, I think they are quite important, because they allow the business to communicate and to reward itself. But if you ever have the chance to sit on a jury, you'll recoil in horror at the reality of the judging process.

There is a lot of money swirling around the advertising world, but I don't make images just to tempt or pitch clients; I have clients in order to make images.

Integrity is more important. One of the worst things that's happened to me, at least in terms of advertising, was when making a commercial for the NSPCC [Can't Look, which won a gold Lion at Cannes in 1999]. During the process of approval, the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre instructed us to make a change to the edit because they said you could not show a child in distress. As it was a commercial about helping abused children, I seriously contested this. It developed into an interesting situation where we were looking at having criminal charges brought against the BACC. I decided not to pursue this action, and we made the edit, but I found myself with incredible support from people who were ready to act quickly against these bureaucrats.

Filming Gun Crime, [a recent TV and cinema spot (shots 103)] showed exactly what a bullet does to various objects. It was being able to shoot at 10,000 frames per second with the Phantom camera that was the ticket. In this way the slow motion could fully explore the devastation of the impact of a bullet but with lyrical and beautiful qualities. The actual shooting [on a rifle range] was straightforward and it was important to simplify the design and the photography so that nothing could interfere with the idea.

My strengths lie in simplifying things. My weakness is not saying "no" enough.

If I could change the world I would… bring back the three-strip Technicolor camera.

If I could relive my life I would avoid studying the Impressionists so closely. They're terrible. Caravaggio's the man.

In the end, what really matters is… the punch line.