London-based photographer Derrick Santini has shot for a long list of magazines and brands, including FHM, Vanity Fair, Interview, Flaunt, Nylon, ID, Avirex, K-Swiss, Nike and Reebok, to name just a few. His new book, Persona, focuses on his celebrity portraits of stars like Jay-Z, Steve Tyler, Sean Lennon, Mary J Blige, Tori Amos and Judi Dench.

Tell us a bit about your new book.
“Persona is all about people and what they project of themselves. You can bring out lots of different sides of a person. There’s a lot of Finley Quay in the book because I’ve shot him in many different kinds of ways. He’s got multiple personas; he’s got a lot of dimensions.”

How is shooting celebrities different than your work in reportage and fashion?
“Celebrities are very used to cameras, so they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re projecting. If they’re a star, in a picture, they know what they are saying. Most people are a bit shy, but celebrities get over it.”

Has it been fun to work with such stars?
“It’s fun when people are up for it. Some people are hard work, but most are up for it. It’s nice when they are really innocent, just really being themselves—when what they’re saying isn’t manufactured.”

Do you find that stars differ greatly from their public images?
“I don’t have expectations of people before I meet them and do a shoot with them. I’ve shot Jack Nicholson, and he’s not in the book. He was just turning it on. It was so dry. In the pictures, he just sat there and gave his mad Jack Nicholson smile, which in a way worked, but I didn’t like the pictures.”

How do you decide which pictures you like?
“With portraits, one hopes to get an evocative image that has something to do specifically with the subject. You want them to be moved by it and not just say, 'Oh, another glossy, fashion picture’.”

Of the formats you shoot, is portraiture your favourite, then?
“At the moment, my favourite thing to shoot is fashion. Fashion is where it’s at creatively. I also always love reportage images. That’s what I started doing. It’s very much like being the voyeur, not to affect anything that is going on, to just observe.”
You’ve said that everyone should be a photographer.

“Photography is a great career. It’s like an all-access pass. You can go anywhere and say that you’re a photographer, and you instantly have something to talk about. It gives you a dialogue with such a cross section of people. You’re there with a camera, and suddenly these great things start happening.”

Persona by Derrick Santini (Dazed Books) is available for £19.99 from Amazon and all good book shops.