ArenaPAL - Clive Barda photo gallery archive and bio



		CLIVE BARDA
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	Born in 1945 Clive Barda took a degree in Modern Languages and began his professional career in the City. His increasing interest in both photography and music, however, led to his deciding in 1967 to become a professional photographer. A chance commission to photograph the harpist Susan Drake in 1968 was to prove the start of a lifetime's devotion to capturing on film the intense dedication, emotion and concentration which musicians bring to their art. Clive Barda has long been recognised as one of London's most distinguished photographers in the field of classical music and the performing arts. He was invited to photograph his first opera at the Royal Opera House in 1974 and has worked closely with the Royal Opera since then. Clive Barda's work has been exhibited widely. In 1979 he had a major exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall which later travelled to Manchester and Australia. In 1985 he had a joint exhibition with Snowdon and Patrick Lichfield at the Science Museum in London and the Royal Photographic Society in Bath. In 1988 he had a one-man show of his opera photographs at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. His work is in the permanent collections of both the National Museum of Photography Film & TV in Bradford, England and the National Portrait Gallery in London. In November 1996 Clive Barda was invited to mount a major exhibition of his photographs to mark the opening of the new Nagaoka Lyric Hall in Japan. In August 2000 an exhibition of his work was mounted as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. This was subsequently seen at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in October 2000 and, later the same year, in Paris. A permanent exhibition of his photos was installed in March 2005 at the Wigmore Hall in London. A passionate lover of the performing arts, especially music, Clive Barda has a unique ability to identify with his subjects and is able to convey this understanding in his images. He says his preferred way of working is to allow an artist to rehearse or perform as if he were not present (he is famously discreet) and then gradually to become part of the creative process himself, the photographs arising naturally from the ebb and flow of the music or drama. During the course of his career Clive Barda has enjoyed working with the world's greatest artists. Each of his photographs is made with love and careful thought to convey not only a particular facet of the performer in question but also to try and capture a unique instant in the preparation and creation of a performance. Clive Barda has illustrated two books: a photographic survey of the work of the sculptor David Wynne published by Phaidon Press for which he did all the photography and a volume celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival for which he was the principal photographer. Performance!, a retrospective of his work with classical musicians and opera singers over the last thirty years was published by Peter Biddulph in December 2000. Clive Barda’s photographs appear continually in books and in all the media and are available through ArenaPAL in London.

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CLIVE BARDA