Nick Knight, who regularly shoots for UK Vogue, creates models who are usually idealised or inspirational. Photo / Babiche Martens

Nick Knight, who regularly shoots for UK Vogue, creates models who are usually idealised or inspirational. Photo / Babiche Martens

"The most brilliant thing about photography is that it's a passport into any social situation whatsoever," says Nick Knight. "It's a ticket to photograph the President of the US, or a heroin addict in Camden, or a prostitute in Paris, or the biggest recording star in the world. Becoming a photographer is a way of finding out about people - finding out about life - and experiencing what they experience."

Over the past 30 years, Knight has given the world - and the world of fashion in particular - some of its most arresting, inspiring and innovative imagery. From capturing the extraordinary early designs of Yohji Yamamoto to the equally remarkable curves of a young Sophie Dahl, from still lives of delicate flowers to Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bundchen and a galaxy of glossy stars - this restless spirit has challenged preconceptions of what is possible, or indeed beautiful, both technically and aesthetically.

This month the first major retrospective of his work is published in book form and a luminescently lovely affair it is too. As well it might be. Knight gave up his summer holiday to go to China and oversee the printing - an example of his fanatical attention to detail. "I can tell you, it wouldn't have looked like this if I hadn't," he laughs. It is one of his more admirable characteristics that this near-pathological precision might apply equally to a film he is making for an up-and-coming young designer who's as poor as the proverbial church mouse as it might to a global advertising campaign that will appear on billboards in New York, Tokyo or Beijing.

It's not all about money.

In central London, meanwhile, an exhibition celebrating the 10th anniversary of his pioneering website, Showstudio.com, is in full flow. Contributors to the site are varied: as well as just about any designer/model/photographer/stylist worth their credentials, artists, musicians and film directors all feature. At the exhibition, meanwhile, visitors are met by a larger-than-life-size sculpture of Naomi Campbell, and enter a highly interactive world that does much to explode the myths behind a largely impenetrable industry - which guards its privacy just as Knight strives to demystify it.

"Showstudio really came about because I thought my life was very interesting and very exciting," he says today. "And I couldn't believe that nobody else could see the things that I was seeing. That sounds very arrogant but it's not meant to be. Back in 1986 when I was photographing a very young Naomi and she was dancing to Prince in a bright red Yohji Yamamoto coat inspired by the collections of Christian Dior, I thought it was just so thrilling. It was a piece of contemporary theatre and it was seen by no more than around seven people.

"Fashion is such a fascinating world and if one could show the research that goes into a John Galliano collection, for example ... It's missed. Fashion is presented as something for the ladies or as trade. It's both scandalised and trivialised and it's a lot more interesting than that."