Barney Edwards

Barney Edwards

Información de Lens Modern

After studying for a Diploma in Graphic Design at Preston Art School, Barney Edwards moved to the South of England and started a career as a photojournalist in London’s Fleet Street. This began his love for travelling to exotic lands - initially in the Middle East and later extensively exploring Europe, Mexico, America, and South East Asia, eventually ending up in Africa.

Barney soon became a successful freelance Advertising photographer working for top British, European and American advertising agencies producing a range of work from fashion and portraits to landscapes, reportage and still life. Described once as ‘the photographers’ photographer’, he made a reputation for ‘specialising in not specialising’, believing a good photographer should be able to photograph anything.

Barney won numerous awards for his photography, including: The Daily Telegraph Photographer of the year (for his ‘in depth’ reportage of the life of tough Cumbrian sheep farmers); Campaign Press Awards; two D&AD Silver Awards; two Gold Awards from The Association of Fashion and Advertising Photographers; a Creative Circle Silver Award; a New York One Show Award; and numerous smaller awards and mentions. He himself served on judging panels for both D&A.D and AFAEP awards.

His work appeared regularly in Edward Booth Clibborn’s European Photography Annual, which said about him, in the preface to its 1984 edition: “Barney Edwards has a particularly appealing set of pictures in the Unpublished Section of this edition of European Photography. Best known for his effective work for some of London’s leading advertising Agencies (he has photographed the new Range Rover, the Sandhurst Chapel War Memorial for the British Army, Chris Boninngton (the British Everest explorer) and his Olympus camera (for Olympus) and, for Johhnie Walker Black Label, a superbly dramatic North Sea ‘moonrise’ over the ocean), he has, in his spare time, created a remarkable series of flower pictures. With their simple uncluttered compositions they are, to me, comparable with many of the fine Old Master’s paintings of flowers and are equally rewarding.”

In the 80s he moved into directing T.V. commercials, becoming well known for his attention to detail and artistic visual flare, again ‘specialising in not specialising’. He was most often involved in highly visual narrative story telling and ‘big production’ work. Again he won numerous awards: a Silver Lion at Cannes; a D&AD Silver; Silver and Bronzes from the British Television Awards; a Silver at the Creative Circle Awards; and again numerous mentions.

In the 90s he moved to Africa, where he married and settled and now works as a filmmaker, photographer and script writer.