Lee was born in 1945 to parents who were both MI5 operatives. The striking and sometimes controversial photographic style meant creating complicated set-ups and ambitious outdoor productions, resulting in images that encourage the viewer to “reach beyond the edges of the frame.”įor Jim Lee, storytelling was always at the heart of his work and his life.
He took photo shoots out of the rigid studios and placed them within the context of a story, becoming a great pioneer of fashion photography. Jim Lee is considered the “original wild child of fashion photography.” Lee’s stylish, dramatic photography is layered with captivating narratives. In addition, he has written articles and essays on various contemporary photographers for publications and journals including Aperture and Portfolio, entries for The Folio Society Book of the 100 Greatest Photographs (2006) and the Encyclopaedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography (2007), and contributed to international exhibition catalogs on the role of photography in the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts Movements. He was editor of Talking Photography, a catalog of the audio and visual collections of the British Library National Sound Archive, where he is an interviewer for the Oral History of British Photography project. A Retrospective (Merrell, 2005) Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour (V&A / Merrell, 2006) and Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography ( V&A / Merrell, 2010). Rural England through a Victorian Lens, (V&A Publications, 2001) Illumine. His publications include Benjamin Brecknell Turner. He has also curated numerous UK touring exhibitions, including Aspects of Architecture Where Are We Questions of Landscape and Something That I’ll Never Really See Contemporary Photography from the V&A and was the V&A curator for the exhibitions: Diane Arbus Revelations (2005-6) Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour (2006) Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography (2010) and co-curator of Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography (2011). Since 1997 he has worked on the Photography Gallery at the V&A, which draws exhibitions from the Museum’s national collection of the art of photography.
Previously, he worked for the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and studied at the University of Leicester and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Martin Barnes is Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) London, which he joined in 1995.