Brief Summary
I am a London based photographer and filmmaker, I am interested in the everyday and how remarkable it can be. For over 20 years I have been fascinated by this amazing trick that the camera can do in freezing a moment for us to hold, inspect, interpret and enjoy at our leisure.
To my clients briefs I bring spontaneity, life, veracity and wit, my work is an antidote to the overworked, retouched CGI creations of my peers.
Clients
Barclays Bank, Jaguar, Range Rover, Toyota, Vauxhall, Volkswagon, Sony, Samsung, IBM, PWC, SAP, Robinsons, Heathrow Airport, Ernst and Young, Visa, Open University, Cambridge University, Transport for London, Waitrose
Professional Experience
Born in London in 1969, Nick Turpin studied Art and Design at the University of Gloucestershire then a BA in Photography, Film and Video at the University of Westminster. On completion of the second year of his degree and aged just 21, Nick was offered a staff photographers position at The Independent Newspaper making him the youngest ever full-time staff photographer on a national daily in the UK. Nick worked as a picture researcher at the London bureau of Magnum Photos before starting his contract with The Independent in 1990.
Nick was one of the photographers that revolutionised the role of photography in newspapers in the UK and beyond, taking photographs that stood on their own to tell a story rather than simply illustrating the words of reporters as well as employing a highly observed and subversive style that become known as The Sideways Glance.
After seven years of shooting news, features and portraits Nick left The Independent in 1997 to start a new chapter.
In 1998 Nick shot the huge launch campaign for Cable & Wireless in the UK which marked his entrance into the world of design and advertising photography, now known as a Street Photographer, he was commissioned to shoot Ads and design projects that looked like real life. Over the next decade Nick would shoot campaigns through most of the big London Ad agencies for clients that included Sony, Jaguar, Range Rover, Yellow Pages, Volkswagon, Toyota, Barclays Bank, Waitrose and Robinsons. He also spent some time working in New York most notably shooting for IBM, SAP and PWC. In 2008 Nick was at the centre of a pioneering social media project from Samsung in which he circumnavigated the globe with a Samsung Camera phone uploading street photographs, a video diary and twittering messages to over half a million people following and directing his journey online. As part of the 2012 London Olympic Games Nick was asked to follow the journey of the Olympic Torch as it travelled around the whole of the United Kingdom sending back a photographic record of observations from each city.
Alongside his commercial life, Nick has an international reputation as a Street Photographer and has done more than any other figure over the last decade to promote the importance of making a candid photographic record of public life. In 2000, four years before the launch of Flickr, Nick started the international Street Photographers group in-public which reached a huge internet audience in bypassing the traditional routes of book publishing and gallery shows. in-public went on to be credited with the massive resurgence in popularity of Street Photography through it’s workshops, travelling exhibitions (Through the British Council) and continued online advocacy of the medium. The group now has 23 members including two Magnum photographers.
Nick personally has taught numerous Street Photography workshops and is a member of the Faculty of The School of Life. He has taught on The Discovery Channel, Tate Modern and Yale School of Art as well as being featured on BBC Radio 4’s Photographing Britain. His work is included in the photography collection of The Museum of London and in 2011 he was featured in Thames & Hudson’s review of contemporary Street Photography, Street Photography Now. In 2011 Nick shot and edited the 38 minute documentary film In-Sight which followed nine Street Photographers working in New York, London, Melbourne and Rotterdam. The film premiered at the FORMAT International Photography Festival with a special screening and Q&A at Tate Moderns Star Auditorium.
In 2010 Nick published the hardback book 10 years of in-public and the Street Photography magazine PUBLICATION which he marketed and sold solely through social media and ecommerce selling 1800 and 1600 copies respectively. Enjoying the craft aspect of offline publishing, in 2011 Nick bought and restored a 2 ton 1973 Heidelberg printing press to do traditional Letterpress printing in his spare time.
Nick is currently based in South East London and photographing regularly for Transport for London and The City of London, he is pursuing a film project about Piccadilly Circus which will be 200 years old in 2019. In the last 12 months he has shot a poster campaign for the V&A Museum, the Open University Annual Report and a Recruitment project for Ernst and Young. He has also completed three short films for Visa illustrating their contactless payment system.
