In Memoriam : Jim Lee : Arrested

Archive – September 19, 2012

Jim Lee – ‘Arrested’: 50 remarkable several years of the unique wild youngster of style pictures

Jim Lee, frequently referred to as England’s solution to Person Bourdin – designed himself a title with his fresh and illustrious acquire on vogue the authentic wild little one of style photography. Arrested is the biography of London-primarily based photographer and movie director Lee and traces his photographic growth as nicely as his vocation in film and contains, among the his most legendary pictures, also numerous almost never witnessed pictures.

Lee was born in 1945 to mothers and fathers who were both working in MI5 and his everyday living has for that reason adopted everything but a standard path. Lee possesses an independent spirit and at the youthful age of seventeen he made the decision to move to Australia in which his fascination and enthusiasm for pictures sparked. Lee’s father pulled him out of the country a little bit later on, to avert him from combating in Vietnam.

Back again in the Uk he started photographing bands these types of as The Who, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. His portfolio and status grew and Lee turned in demand from customers as a trend photographer doing the job with personalities such as Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour on shoots and collaborating with influential vogue designer this kind of as Yves St Laurent and Gianni Versace.

In the late seventies, Lee turned to movie directing and produced a excellent repertoire of a lot more than 400 promoting campaigns for brands such as Levi’s, Elizabeth Arden, BMW and Shell as properly as a the total-length aspect film ‘Losing Track’ in 1992, starring Alan Bates.

But what seriously will make Lee’s operate stand out, are the loaded narratives and tales in the constantly stunning and intriguing photographs. Lee was groundbreaking in his time, his distinct gritty, photojournalistic model, which later on on developed into ‘a passionate tender-concentration frenzy’ as explained by the photographer himself. He introduced to the industry of vogue and advertising and marketing pictures sturdy, enchanting tales and narrative and hence released a new sort of visual expression, of which he became a pioneer. His pictures normally appears to be encouraged by his individual life, his narratives obtaining a potent partnership with its personal time, drawing to political events this sort of as the Vietnam War or the Baader Meinhof activities.

Lee’s photographic function has not only been displayed planet large in galleries and museums but is also in the long term collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Back again in 2005 Nikon sponsored Lee’s very first impartial exhibition on the back of which Tim Jeffries, of the prestigious Hamilton’s Gallery, picked Lee up and continued to characterize him to the current day.

Today Lee is an set up artwork photographer but however collaborates on several marketing and trend tasks – for illustration masking trend exhibits for celeb designers such as Alexander McQueen and Zandra Rhodes. In the starting of 2012 Lee’s perform has been shown in London at Somerset Home, to coincide with the start of his biography ‘Arrested’ revealed by Ammonite Press. In Spring 2013 it will be demonstrated at the Multi Media Art Museum in Moscow and the National Art Museum of China in Bejing.

Anna-Maria Pfab

Arrested has been published by Ammonite Push and includes a foreword by Barry Schwabsky.
288 pages – 250 images
Proportions: 370 x 300mm
ISBN-13: 9781907708121
Price: £75.00