133 - Barry Lewis
© Barry Lewis
Barry Lewis is a British photographer and filmmaker who for several decades has worked internationally for numerous prestigious publications from Life magazine to National Geographic. Having originally studied theoretical chemistry, Barry won a scholarship from the Royal College of Art to do an MA in photography and subsequently began his career in style when he won the Vogue Award and worked as a staff photographer for the magazine on a salary of £10 per week.
In 1981, Barry co-founded Network Photographers a London-based co-operative photo agency for photojournalists and documentary photographers, based loosely on the Magnum Photos model.
As well as photojournalism and portraiture, Barry has directed over 20 documentaries, commercials and art films. His work has been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Museum of London and The Photographers Gallery, London.
Notable exhibitions and awards include Positive Lives (1993), a book and international exhibition about living with AIDS and the World Press Award’s Oskar Barnack Medal for humanitarian photography (1990). In 2019 his images from Butlins in the 1980s were shown at Turner Contemporary as part of the “Resort” show.
Since 2010 Barry has worked with musician David Toop and singer Elaine Mitchener to produce the mixed-media production “Of Leonardo” for the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, Venice. A new version, choreographed by Dam Van Huynh, now tours internationally with a performance at the Purcell Room on the South Bank in September 2018.
Barry has published numerous photobooks including Blackpool 1984-1989 (Café Royal books), Butlins Holiday Camp 1982 (Café Royal books), Soho in the 1990s (Café Royal books), Vaguely Lost in Shangri-la: 14 years of the Glastonbury Festival (Flood Publications) and Miami Beach 1985-2000 (Hoxton Mini Press, 2019).
On episode 133, Barry discusses, among other things:
Chemistry, teaching and the Royal College
Coming of age in the 60s
Starting Network Photographers
Adventures on assignment in Romania
Winning the Oksar Barnack Award for his Copsa Mica story
Albania
Miami Beach project
Photographing strangers
Making films
Organising his archive
BLM and London during lockdown
Referenced:
Martin Slavin
Sue Trangmar
Colin Jacobson
“I toured China with Elton John and Watford football club. You can’t make these things up. And there were no other photographers. So you had this kind of access and freedom. And just travelling… It was so exciting.”
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INFORM THE MIND, INSPIRE THE SOUL
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