MUSIC INDUSTRY PHOTOGRAPHER EXTRAORDINAIRE -

Everything to do with music is very much part of both Brian's professional and social life. From his early work with Stiff Records, through his close collaborations with Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode, to the present day working with "cutting edge" musicians, his photography and film-making skills have always been in demand.

1948 : born in Birmingham
1948-1969 : lived in Stourbridge
1959 : educated at Halesowen Technical School
1964-69 : studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic School of Photography
1972 : freelance photographer
1980 : established Brian Griffin Studio
1991 : co-established Produktion
1997 : joined Mighty
1999 : joined Douglas+Jones
2000-2001 : wrote the screenplay for "Bluetown"
2001 : joined The Clinic
2003 : "People and the City" : project to help Birmingham's bid to become European Capital City of Culture 2008
2004 : films and stills project for Sir Paul McCartney
2005 : first retrospective, exhibited at The Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
2005 : an exhibition of photography commissioned by LCR for the London Eurostar project, housed at St. Pancras station
2006: gallery exhibition at Gallery 100 Degrees in Reykjavik, Iceland, to coincide with the publishing of a new hardback book called "The Water People", inspired by Jules Vergne's "Journey To The Center Of The Earth".

SELECTED CLIENTS

Kate Bush : Brian Eno : George Martin : Simple Minds : Joe Jackson : Billy Idol : Elvis Costello and The Attractions : Psychedelic Furs : Peter Gabriel : King Sunny Ade : Echo and The Bunnymen : Siouxsie and The Banshees : Depeche Mode : Sly'n'Robbie : Iggy Pop : Panasonic : Tindersticks : Mogwai : Pan Sonic : Devo : The Pop Group : The Teardrop Explodes : Peter Hamill : Graham Parker : Ian Dury and the Blockheads : Alan Vega : Pole : Throbbing Gristle : Sir Paul McCartney

Brian Griffin’s work is included in a number of international collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Arts Council of Great Britain; the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, UK; and the Art Museum of Reykjavik, Iceland.

 

More information about Brian Griffin's amazing photo exhibition entitled "The Water People" (which was on display in London and Reykjavik, Iceland in late 2006)

In his first major UK exhibition in 15 years, Britain’s greatest living portrait photographer presents the mythic tale of an aerial expedition across Iceland’s epic landscape in search of The Water People.

Brian Griffin draws on Jules Verne’s

Journey to the Centre of the Earth in response to a commission from Reykjavik Energy, visualising the pathway of its remarkable geothermal infrastructure as a modern Icelandic saga. The adventure – retold through a surreal, filmic narrative of large-scale colour and black-and-white photographs – begins with a bizarre rooftop encounter, where he is introduced to his aircrew. And so the flight of fancy unfolds – a voyage into a netherworld of gaseous, ethereal landscapes, following a pathway of polished metallic pipelines to discover The City of the Water People, inhabited by strange, amorphous, liquid life forms.

The exhibition combines artfully constructed portraits, utilising a specially-made screen to create a watery abstraction, together with Friedrich-inspired landscapes. Drilling bores and electricity pylons are transformed into menacing, alien elements among Iceland’s apocalyptic surface – alive with gushing waterfalls and geysers. Griffin’s heavy use of symbolism, his fictional narratives and Noirish aesthetic runs counter to the objective, documentary approach that dominates contemporary art photography. Rather than examining the world through the shield of a camera, his photography is an exploration of self.

‘The thing about Iceland is that it’s so powerful and distinctive that it breaks away from the cliche of landscape,’ says Griffin. ‘It’s so elemental, so exaggerated. You feel like you’re at the creation of the Earth. I seem to gravitate towards the really dynamic part of Iceland - the steam and the fire and the waterfalls. But, ultimately, I was trying to photograph it as a state of mind, as a way of externalising my own feelings, rather than a landscape in itself – like self-portraiture.’

 

 

 

 

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