Photographer
Nigel Parry started his career designing books for Faber & Faber and ended up photographing presidents, a pivot that says everything about his singular gift: the ability to enter the most surveilled faces on earth and still find something nobody else found. Born in a South Yorkshire mining village, he discovered photography while working as a graphic designer, and within a year of his first London exhibition the Sunday Times Magazine was calling. By 1994 he was in New York, shooting for The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Entertainment Weekly, subjects from Bill Clinton to Martin Scorsese, all photographed with the same disquieting proximity, the camera so close the viewer feels they've entered someone's private space uninvited. He was the first portrait photographer invited to exhibit at the Cannes Film Festival, and his work is held by the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Signature Traits
Major Works
Sharp (2000)
His debut monograph. 154 duotone portraits of the most photographed people alive, introduction by Liam Neeson. Designed by Pentagram. The definitive statement of his visual philosophy and still the book that defines him.
BLUNT (2006)
The follow-up, and if anything more unsparing. The close-up pushed further, the celebrity apparatus stripped further back. Where Sharp announced a voice, BLUNT confirmed it had nowhere to go but deeper.
A Journey of Smiles (2007)
A deliberate counterpoint to his celebrity work. Children in China, Brazil, and India photographed during Operation Smile surgical missions. The same precision and dignity applied to subjects who had never been photographed at all. In 2010, Operation Smile honored him with the Universal Smile Award.
