Kate Moss may be able to eclipse anything that comes near her, but a fact oft forgotten is that there’s a whole heap more than a beautiful girl and her clothes that goes into making a fashion shoot. Image-makers go to great lengths to create an alternative reality for a photograph, commissioning artists and artisans to create beautiful, one-off props that lend atmosphere and back story. But props are like red-carpet dresses: they can’t be seen twice. So, shoot over, they just get chucked in a skip.

Nobody knows this better than the fashion photographer Nick Knight. “John Galliano painted a skull and crossbones on this Union Jack. The tiger was stuffed specifically for Alexander McQueen. Coco Rocha modelled with these giant cherries for the photographer Tim Walker.” Knight is talking me through his dazzling new shop in Mayfair, London, which opens on Tuesday. These are the pieces that didn’t get away — they once appeared in his shoots, and now they are available to buy. Crisply dressed in his signature Kilgour suit, Knight is buoyed by a wiry energy that makes for impassioned monologues: “The waste felt criminal. Somebody would love these pieces if they knew they existed.”

Now, “visionary” can be a bit of a throwaway word, but the 50-year-old Knight warrants it. When, for example, Knight shot the then ample (and naked) Sophie Dahl in 1997 — the first photographer to do so — it wasn’t for controversy’s sake, but because he has always championed a broader view of beauty. In 2000, he democratised the arcane world of fashion by founding (and entirely funding) SHOWstudio, a fashion and art internet broadcast channel. “I wanted to do something that was not about making money,” he says. SHOWstudio has persuaded some of the world’s most reticent stars — among them, Kate Moss, Vivienne Westwood and Björk — to be interviewed by their fans in a live chatroom. Knight has also invited designers such as Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh to create fashion patterns that can be downloaded for free.

Now Knight is on to stemming waste in the image industry (while earning some extra cash on the side). When you’re Nick Knight, you get to choose who you work with (for example, Jake Chapman, Tracey Emin and the top set designers Simon Costin, Shona Heath and Michael Howells), and discarding all they create amounts to some kind of tragedy. The pink Cadillac he bought for a Dior campaign, starring Angela Lindvall, spent eight forgotten years in a Colchester lock-up. Other pieces went to his mother; the skip pretty much ate the rest.

For Knight’s latest batch of props, tragedy has turned into happy endings — for the designers and buyers. Knight believes set designers should be recognised as artists. “It’s only because they are not in contact with the marketplace that they aren’t,” he explains. (Knight called in the valuers from Phillips and Christie’s to guide him on prices, which range from £500 to £50,000, so not quite art-grade yet.)

Each piece comes with its own history, so Knight must be holding onto some favourites. Apparently not. “My parents ran an antiques shop, and their house was full of things they’d hoarded,” he says. “I don’t want anything in my house.” Knight’s minimalist, David Chipperfield-designed home in Petersham, Surrey, where he lives with his wife, Charlotte, and their three children (aged 16, 14 and 12), is, he says, “lovely, clean and modern”. “It suits me to have nothing but my kids’ paintings on the wall. I have the photographs of these pieces. I am just happy they are out there.”

SHOWstudio SHOP, 1-9 Bruton Place, W1; 020 7399 4299, showstudio.com

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