20 Years Of ‘Back To Black’: The Time I Photographed Amy Winehouse In My London Flat

When I first photographed Amy Winehouse, she was still becoming the global icon she’s remembered as. I’d seen her perform at a charity event in London a few months earlier, and she stopped me in my tracks. At that point, I’d never heard of her before. She’d released Frank but she’d passed me by. Missy Elliott was in the audience that night, and the two of them had this brilliant banter going on. I remember thinking, “Wow, this artist is an incredible talent. I’m going to look out for her.”

At the time, I was working as a photographer in London, shooting for magazines like i-D, The Face and Dazed. I’d gone to art college in England, having grown up in America, and somehow ended up staying for 20 years. I photographed musicians – from Ghostpoet to The White Stripes – artists, writers and actors, always drawn to people who had something of their own going on.

Later, an art director from Island Records I’d met with a couple of months earlier called me: had I heard of Amy Winehouse, he asked? I told him I had – and that I thought she was incredible. They wanted me to take some press photographs, with the possibility that the pictures might be used for her new album. I’d shot a fashion story at home that the art director liked, so I sent over some pictures of my flat. Amy must have liked what she saw, and agreed to shoot there.

We met a few weeks before we were due to shoot to make sure we got on – I visited her and her then-boyfriend at her flat in Camden. The boyfriend answered the door and told me she was in the bath. I sat in the living room chatting to him when, all of a sudden, I heard water rushing through the ceiling. There was a hole in it, with pots underneath to catch the water. Amy had let the bath out upstairs. She came down with a towel wrapped around her head as though nothing had happened.

That was my introduction to Amy. She was funny, smart and cheeky. I wasn’t there long, but it was enough for her to decide I was someone she could deal with taking her picture. I got the impression that the marketing side of the music industry barely registered with her. She was an artist, first and foremost. What mattered was the music, love, and having fun. Album covers and press photographs weren’t what got her out of bed in the morning.

Usually, when you’re commissioned to photograph an artist for an album, you hear the music and discuss the direction of the artwork. None of that happened here. I hadn’t heard the album, and I wasn’t thinking about creating some definite image that would represent Amy for the rest of her career. So I did what I normally did. I’ve always been interested in environmental portraiture – photographing people in spaces that tell you something about them. We started in a bar on Portobello Road and then went back to my flat in Kensal Rise, where we took most of the pictures.

Amy, as you might imagine, didn’t hold back. At one point, she started giving me a hard time for dragging her to west London. She was like, “Why the fuck have you brought me to west London? Fuck west London.” Then said, “Who do you think I am, M.I.A?” Funnily enough, I knew Maya from before she was famous. When we were shooting outside of the bar on Portobello, Maya happened to walk past us. She called out to me, “Hey, what’s up Mischa?” I managed to get three frames of the two of them together. Amy changed her tune a little once Maya was standing right there! But I love those pictures. They capture two singular artists at turning points of their respective careers – both were already doing things entirely on their own terms.

The final setup of the day was in my home office, in front of a cupboard whose doors I’d painted with blackboard paint, so my kids could draw on them. I kept my negatives and contact sheets in there, and the cupboard had become a kind of family noticeboard. We photographed Amy against it, and that was that. That was the picture.

In another twist of fate, I didn’t know the album was going to be called Back to Black and I didn’t know the blackboard would end up being so perfectly suited to the title. I think I got lucky. There’s something pretty beautiful about the fact that a picture so closely bound to Amy’s history came out of such an ordinary, domestic setting. It wasn’t in a studio with an elaborate set or a big production team; it was in my house, photographing an artist I liked.

My pal, the DJ, musician and director Don Letts, lived up the road from us and our families were close; our children were around the same age and we spent a lot of time together – the name of one of Don’s daughters, Honor, was actually scribbled on that blackboard at the time. Sometime after the shoot, I went round to Don’s house. He showed me a sample copy of Amy’s new album – the kind they sent to DJs before the music had even been released. “Oh shit man. I photographed her and I haven’t even heard this thing,” I remember saying. Don told me it was “fucking great” and so I put it on. That was my first listen to Back to Black. By then, my photograph was already on the cover.

I loved the album instantly. “Love is a Losing Game” was a particular favourite. There was something about the way Amy wrote about heartbreak through the language of snooker that really struck me. Her voice had an otherworldly quality, reminiscent of Nina Simone or Billie Holiday. She was only 23 but already a legend in the making. The album felt timeless and old-fashioned in the best possible sense, whilst the lyrics were entirely of their time. Typical Amy to write something so devastatingly beautiful and then throw in a word like “fuckery” and make it sound entirely natural. It was so distinctive, so unmistakably her. There aren’t many artists who can make a record feel completely original and instantly familiar at the same time.

To this day, I am incredibly honoured to have been involved, even in such a small way. When I was first commissioned, I had no idea Amy would become such a huge figure. At the time, it was simply a chance to work with an artist I respected – everything that followed came later. People sometimes imagine that when a photograph becomes iconic, everyone involved must have known they were making history. In reality, you’re just doing your job, trying to make good pictures and hoping the person in front of your camera trusts you enough to be themselves. And Amy was herself. She didn’t seem especially concerned with how she was supposed to behave or what anyone expected of her. She was just Amy.

As told to Riann Phillip