Tim Flach on Cats, Craft, Curiosity – and Creative Rights

Tim traces his evolution from fine art and commercial photography into self-taught digital mastery – highlighting how tools like EIZO monitors and Hasselblad cameras became central to maintaining the precision his work demands. “The confidence and trust in what I see on screen is everything,” he emphasises, in explaining the importance of colour fidelity and consistency in his global publishing workflow.

For Tim, photographing cats isn’t just about capturing animals, it’s about decoding a mirror we hold up to ourselves. “What is it that we like about them?” he muses. “Cats do what they want to do. Maybe that’s something many of us find more appealing than a dog waiting to be fed or taken for walkies.”

Cats, unlike their canine counterparts, possess a quiet autonomy – an evolutionary aloofness that intrigues and divides. But Tim isn’t looking to take sides in the age-old cat-versus-dog debate. Rather, he sees felines as a rich lens through which to explore our own impulses, affections, and the very psychology of attachment.

Though known for his hyper-controlled portrait work, Tim is no stranger to the wild, either. He’s photographed jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal, cheetahs in the Maasai Mara, and even hammerhead sharks off remote coasts. Yet ironically, he notes, capturing an elusive jaguar was often easier than coaxing a domestic cat into a usable frame. “All you need for a dog is a sausage or a squeaky pig,” he laughs. “But a cat’s thinking: What’s in it for me?”

But it’s not just the shoot that requires discipline. The real work – days, sometimes weeks per image – comes in post-production. Tim and his team meticulously process files at unusually high resolutions (400 DPI rather than the standard 300), ensuring the clarity and tonal depth match the conceptual depth. And just as much effort goes into the text. “We spent more time on the copy and research than people will realize,” he says. Collaborating with scientists and scholars, the team embedded complex evolutionary and behavioural insights into accessible language, creating a book that’s as intellectually rich as it is visually arresting.

Behind every one of Tim’s images lies not only a striking animal portrait, but a meticulous process of care, layering, and artistic philosophy. “When we talk about time,” he says, “it’s really about how much you care.” This isn’t just about the hours spent, it’s about emotional investment, artistic precision, and pushing past the functional into the poetic.

That care, he’s quick to clarify, isn’t his alone. He credits his assistant – April – as a co-engineer of the book’s conceptual architecture. “Although I’m credited as the photographer, we have pulled together the concepts, the frameworks, the research. We’re both a bit OCD,” he admits with a grin. “And maybe that obsessive quality is what allows us to go as far as we can. To take an idea to its best possible conclusion.”

Tim’s work doesn’t end with the shutter click. In fact, for him, that’s where it begins.

As a trained painter, he still approaches photographs like canvas: breaking them down, rebuilding them, drawing from visual principles mastered by Renaissance painters. “I’m constantly asking, ‘How does the eye move through this picture?’” He experiments with subtle shifts in luminosity, studies countershading, and channels Leonardo da Vinci’s sfumato – the soft haze between light and shadow. “Painters understood how to guide emotion through tone and form. I’m always pulling from that tradition.”

Yet he doesn’t merely idealize the image. He reintroduces imperfection by brushing raw details back into the frame. “We take the RAW file, overlay it, and selectively restore the disruption – the hairs, the textures – placing them exactly where they serve the emotional flow of the picture.” This delicate dance between control and chaos, polish and grit, reflects a broader shift in how we perceive photography in the AI era.

As Tim sees it, the question isn’t just whether an image is real –it’s how it matches up to our expectations of what is real.

That’s why, alongside the book’s QR-coded video content and studio footage, there’s a deeper imperative: to foreground authenticity without losing beauty. “This isn’t about polishing until it’s false. It’s about going deep enough that we bring something back that’s honest, intricate, and, hopefully, enduring.”

Having started in 1983, Tim has witnessed several creative industries vanish or transform. “When I began, there were incredible airbrush artists working with grain textures on large black-and-white prints. There were typesetters, grant projectors (a mechanical contraption to magnify or reduce artwork so that the image could be traced). Those jobs disappeared.” Today’s upheaval is different in scale – and in consequence.

“The biggest challenges now,” he says, “are existential ones.” If deepfakes and synthetic images can mimic reality, what becomes of the photograph as evidence? What happens when the image no longer bears witness?

He references Roland Barthes, who described a photograph as inherently bound to death and a witness to a moment no longer. “Now, these new images were never alive,” he says. “They never were a witness to anything. That’s why they’re dangerous. If we build our beliefs and values on images that were never real, we’re in trouble.”

He cites the case of the Windrush scandal, where an archivist, who was deeply familiar with iconic immigration photos, noticed inconsistencies. The people depicted were unrecognizable. They’d been AI-generated. “They were never real pictures,” Tim says. “That’s the shadow we’re entering.” Yet he remains committed to truth, not just through the image, but through the collaborative act of making it. 

Though he’s credited as photographer, Tim emphasises the communal nature of the work. “This isn’t therapy,” he says. “This is communication. Visual communication. And to do that well, you need to understand how people make meaning.” 

That’s why feedback – whether from colleagues or from the public – remains integral. “I’ll show an image, and someone will say, ‘That bit’s annoying.’ And I’ll think, Oh, they’re right. As soon as they point it out, I can’t unsee it.” 

So while he carries the eye of a master craftsman, Tim remains grounded in the social responsibility of his medium. “Photography isn’t just about what you see,” he reflects. “It’s about how we see, how we understand, and increasingly, how we believe. That’s what’s at stake.”

Tim’s influence stretches far beyond the confines of photography. “I’ve seen my work reinterpreted in films,” he says, referencing More Than Human, a book whose imagery inspired creature design in major productions. “I met the people at Pinewood Studios who build those creatures. And I think it’s cool. It’s great to know you’ve created something that changes the way others create.”

He sees no problem with influence. In fact, he welcomes it. “I did a book on horses, and I saw how the way I stylised them started showing up in other photographers’ work. I expect people to look at what I do and ask themselves how they might approach the same subject. That’s part of what it means to work inside a cultural framework.”

What he does object to is uninvited imitation without credit, and worse, the automated harvesting of style for commercial AI models. “An academic once told me, ‘Do you realise you’re one of the most scraped photographers on the internet?’ I didn’t know. But I found out people were typing my name into generators, and my style would be reproduced – automatically, instantly.”

“It’s one thing to influence another artist. It’s something very different to be harvested, uncredited, by platforms profiting from your life’s work.” This, for Tim, gets to the heart of the crisis facing not just photographers, but all creative workers. “We’re not Luddites. We’re not trying to break things. But we do want a fair system.” In his eyes, it’s the old story of wealth being concentrated at the top, at the expense of those doing the emotional and intellectual labour below.

“We’re often sacrificing financial reward,” he says, “because we care. I care about our connection with nature. I care about questions of ethics and society. And yet, we’re being sucked dry like parasites feeding future trillionaires, who are currently just billionaires.”

For Tim, this issue is systemic. He sees the erosion of sustainable careers everywhere –from fine art to sports photography. “Photographers today sit for hours on the side of a football pitch for £200. That’s not sustainable. There aren’t matches every day. There’s travel. Kit. Insurance. It’s not viable.”

But despite the challenges, he remains energized. “At this stage in my career, I feel lucky to be part of these conversations and to be shaping how we understand the natural world, and how we respond to AI and authorship.” 

His work, then, is not just about cats, or dogs, or endangered species. It’s about the forces shaping our culture: truth, perception, value, collaboration. The photo may be still, but the context is always moving.

Fotografie ist für Tim etwas Persönliches, aber niemals etwas Einsames. Von der akribischen Bearbeitung bis hin zu den Druckverfahren in China, vom interaktiven Storytelling auf QR-Basis bis hin zu den eingebetteten kulturellen Referenzen – jedes Detail entsteht im Dialog. 

„Das macht es so reichhaltig“, fasst er zusammen. Wir können nicht kontrollieren, wie Menschen ein Buch erleben, aber wir können die Reise so sinnvoll wie möglich gestalten. Wir können uns darum kümmern, die richtigen Voraussetzungen zu schaffen. Das ist keine Manipulation. Es geht darum, einen Raum zu schaffen, in dem Bedeutung entstehen kann. Es ist eine Einladung, keine Anweisung. 

Seit meinem letzten Buch [Birds] sind vier Jahre vergangen, und die Werkzeuge haben sich erheblich verbessert. Hoffentlich habe ich auch ein bisschen mehr gelernt. Ich hoffe, dass ich weitermachen kann [und weitere Bücher produzieren kann]. Aber wer weiß? Das Schicksal wird entscheiden.“