Hard times? For Rankin, the single-monikered photographer famed for co-founding Dazed & Confused as much as he is for his fashion and portrait images, the credit crunch will just have to wait. He's kicking off 2009 by opening a new 'cultural hub' in central London. Designed by award-winning architect Trevor Home and featuring a studio, gallery, office and penthouse apartment for Rankin, plus 11 other flats, it's just the kind of project that's earned him a reputation for bullishness. But when asked about it, he's surprisingly self-effacing. 'I didn't plan this project around the recession!' he says. 'When it started, it was the height of the boom.'

Even still, he remains undeniably self-assured. 'I'm sure I can run it despite the downturn. I spend so much on hiring studios I thought I might as well pay myself.'

Just do it

Perhaps Rankin really is recession-proof. He and Jefferson Hack chose to launch Dazed & Confused at the height of the last downturn in 1991 and, such was its success, it came to define the zeitgeist of London just as it was reinventing itself as the capital of cool. Dazed has since spawned acclaimed spin-offs Another Magazine and Another Man.

Inspired by Malcolm McLaren's punk approach, Rankin's ethos, he reveals, is 'just do it, don't wait to be asked'.

'When we launched Dazed, there were no jobs, no work and we had to fight for everything,' he says. 'We didn't think the magazine would last six months. But it makes for good creativity when there's very little money.'

The magazine helped launch Rankin's own career, but he stepped back from the magazine in 1996, wary of becoming its in-house photographer. He's carved a glittering path since, shooting just about everybody who's counted over the past couple of decades, alongside creating ads for clients as diverse as H&M, Dom Perignon and Oxfam, as well as editorial for titles such as GQ, Playboy and Vogue.

He also launched a photobook publishing company, Vision On with gallery dealer Alex Proud, has numerous monographs to his name, and has staged dozens of exhibitions, not least of which is a large show going up in August at London's Truman Brewery. That's quite a CV for a photographer still in his early forties, which is perhaps why some detractors have labelled him a jack-of-all-trades.

Democracy

He takes the criticism on the chin, with - again - a disarming lack of pride. 'Sometimes I look at Nick Knight and Jurgen Teller and think, "Fuck, I wish I was more of a specialist",' he says. 'But you can't go through your life feeling jealous. You'll always wish you'd made photographs other people have taken. I've just found it very easy to have ideas and execute them, and I've never wanted to shoot in just one style. I've never wanted to be pigeon-holed like Terry Richardson or Corinne Day. You can look at their work and trace it back through Nan Goldin or William Eggleston. I wanted to do something different. I actively try to change my style.'

But he's also something of a democrat, a quality that sits well with his pluralism but runs counter to his brash reputation. One of the reasons he and Hack set up Dazed, he says, was because they found the idea of 'Style Bibles' (beacons of cool such as i-D or The Face) so patronising. And similarly, he values editorial and advertising photography over art because it's so much more widely accessible.

'I don't like art photography because it's so elitist,' he says. 'It doesn't reach enough people. If you're working in a medium you should be communicating to the largest number of people you can. Magazines and posters and so on reach a much larger audience. I don't like the highbrow nature of art photography and the way you have to have a certain education to understand the images.'

And a similar spirit runs through his choice of kit - he adopted digital early on, he says, because it's so collaborative. 'I love the immediacy of digital,' he says. 'I always wanted it with film. I used to use a lot of Polaroids. I'd show them to my subjects and try to get them excited about what we were doing. Now I shoot tethered to a laptop and they can be totally involved. I got a Kodak back years ago, which was lovely but very slow. Now I use a Mamiya with a Phase One back, because I love the Capture One software.'

Fashion homage

Ever the artful self-promoter, his latest wheeze is a documentary for BBC Four, part of its Style on Trial season. Seven Photographs that Changed Fashion (which was screened on 17 January) followed Rankin as he recreated seven iconic fashion shots, from Cecil Beaton's 1934 Hat Box to Richard Avedon's 1955 Dovima with Elephants. He agreed the shortlist with the producers, ensuring that his hero, David Bailey, was included and that Bailey came along to the shoot.

But although he loved shooting the project, he was also very wary of it. He thinks of himself as a portrait photographer first and foremost, but is still sensitive to the criticism levelled at fashion shooters - that they steal other photographers' work. So the idea of re-shooting seven iconic images, he says, just made him feel like a thief.

'What I liked about the idea was really showing how each photographer worked,' he says. 'It was an education for me, almost like a college project. But while re-shooting their images is a great education, taking the elements they shot is never enough. You need to add something yourself.'

So, while he was faithful enough to employ some of the same kit as used in the original shoots, he also added his own twist. Erwin Blumenfeld's 1950 Vogue cover was re-imagined with a cheeky tongue, for example, while Avedon's Dovima with Elephants became sexier and less theatrical. In doing so, he believes, he came closer to the spirit of the originals, which succeeded because they tapped into the zeitgeist. 'That's what separated these photographers from the Average Joes,' he says. 'They summed up the society at the time in a way that the society was prepared to reflect.'

Real beauty

It's an approach he successfully adopted five years ago, when shooting Dove's acclaimed 'Real Beauty' ad campaign. Featuring larger and older models than usually seen in beauty ads, Rankin says it was as 'a campaign waiting to happen', it was so of its time. Even still, he adds, he had to encourage the client into it.

'Dove was nervous about a couple of the women we chose (at the casting) so I said, "Let's overshoot and see how they look". Then I was at the Sunday Times one day and I had the pictures on me, so I suggested they take a look. They wanted to put them on the front of the magazine and that was it as far as Dove was concerned.'

He hopes this kind of proactive approach will stand him in good stead now that times are hard. He's getting just as many ads as ever, he says, and although the budgets are declining he doesn't care a great deal - he'll work for very little if he likes the idea. He's also planning his latest exhibition, publishing three books, and directing TV commercials, in which he's carved out a thriving sideline over the last two years. 'I throw everything I have into my work,' he says. 'Even more so if there's a recession.'

For more on Rankin, visit www.rankin.co.uk.