Andrew Catlin

Catlin grew up intrigued by both arts and science. His childhood was spent in London in the 1960s during a period of great transformation and social change. His father, Harry, was the son of a carpenter from the Midlands, who moved to London in the 1950's to work at the BBC. His mother, Joan, was from the north east of England, growing up in county Durham, before coming to London to study English and then finding work at the BBC, where she met Harry.

Catlin had early interests in ethology and also photography, which was encouraged by his father, himself a keen photographer. In 1978, Catlin was awarded the Prince Philip Prize for Zoology by the Zoological Society of London for a research project completed while at school.[2] After attending University College London, he continued his studies with a psychology degree at Durham University before returning to London to do a research degree in Learning and Development at University College London.

During this time he developed his interest in photography. Early work for NME, Melody Maker, Smash Hits, POP and Spin quickly extended to other publications, and commissions from record companies, musicians, designers and artists internationally. His work appeared on record sleeves, books and magazine covers. He was one of the photographers chosen to document the Live Aid concert in 1985 and was the largest single contributor to the subsequent exhibition and book.[3]

During the 1980s he began directing music videos.[4] During a visit to Japan while working with Bryan Adams, he was experimenting with a Super-8 movie camera, when Adams asked if he would film one of his live songs. The black and white clip that followed was reviewed by Chrissy Iley in Direction Magazine as a great debut. His second video, for the Cowboy Junkies track, Blue Moon was given a feature in Direction:

"Blue Moon surprised me, impressed me, and I'm hard to impress, especially with performance videos. Its approach is not clinical or technical or corporate. But its flickered lights and sepia faces strike a mood that few directors of the three-minute clip even bother to think necessary. The facial expressions are important to him, and are carefully monitored with his portraiture eye. Fortunately, MTV shared my view and put it on heavy rotation."(Chrissy Iley).

Catlin was Director of Photography for Elements of Mine, a film by Egyptian director Khaled El Hagar which was awarded First Prize in the Toronto Moving Pictures Festival (MoPix Award 2004). [5]

In 2008, drawing together experience from photography, filmmaking and graphic design, he began a project called "The Matrix Series", exploring graphic compositions with complex multi-frame narratives. Each piece was shot as a set of images designed to interact in multiple dimensions, combining elements of time, movement, rhythm, narrative and graphic structure, while remaining within an essentially documentary framework. In his essay "Nine Hastings Photographers" Vasileios Kantas proposes that

"Andrew Catlin's imagery formations could be considered as a study on perception. His matrix suggests a unique syntax, of which the visual elements have been formed partly coincidentally - the subject's actions - and partly in a controllable way - the photographer's decisions. The way the sub-frames are selected and positioned in the matrix is preconceived, though it does not serve the linearity of time which seems to be loosened, if not abolished. The display of the sub-frames allows different reading strategies, seemingly serving many goals simultaneously."

Sean O'Hagan, photography writer for The Observer, notes

"In his Matrix series, he has somehow merged the rigorously formal with the luminously observational. Whereas the likes of Blossfeldt and the Bechers created visual typologies, arranging plants and industrial water towers respectively in grids that echo the natural and man-made sameness of their subjects, Catlin has used the grid format to render a series of what he calls "critical" moments. The resulting images are both formally detached and acutely observational, ordered yet intimate. ... Andrew Catlin is a photographer with a scientific eye. He is obsessive, meticulous and rigorous, but also a quiet, unobtrusive observer of the everyday sublime. It shines brightly though his big pictures."[6]

In 2021 he produced an exhibition and book of portraits, Rebel Song, exploring the connections of history and faces of Irish music. Excerpts from the book were presented by The Irish Cultural Centre in London, with commentary:

"Rebel Song; Faces of Irish Music is a collection of photographs of some of the most important musicians who changed the face of Irish Music into the international force it is today. With the words of Irish song's, quotes from the musicians, and written commentaries on Irish history and on British colonial rule in Ireland, published throughout – what emerges is a powerful and sublime book which charts the evolution from Irish folk, into rebellious Rock, Pop and Protest Songs and Punk, which burst into the sounds and voice of a nation's resistance and exploded onto a global stage.

What's so extraordinary about the book is that its author, photographer Andrew Catlin, is an Englishman, who knew nothing about Irish history at the outset. While producing the book Catlin under-went a journey of discovery to find the connection between Irish music, the history of Ireland, and the passion, power and intensity of some of the greatest Irish songwriters and performers of the last 50 years.

Catlin says "Many of the references in Irish songs – people and places that in Ireland carry a heavy weight of history – have no meaning at all in England. You feel the strength of emotion, but unrecognised names seem quaint or unimportant. It can be shocking when you find a familiar song is about a shameful episode of British brutality."[7]

His photography is held in major collections and archives worldwide, ranging from The National Portrait Gallery in London[8] to the Schwules Museum in Berlin.[9]

• The Diorama (London) - Last Few Days
• Live Aid Exhibition (London) (1985)
• Schwules Museum (Berlin)
• British Council Touring Exhibition (international)
• NME (London)
• The Photographers' Gallery (London)
• National Portrait Gallery (London) - She Bop (2003)
• National Portrait Gallery (London) - Benjamin's Britain (2006)
• National Portrait Gallery (London) - Four Corners (2007)
• Bodelwyddan Castle - Made in 1988 Exhibition (2013)
• Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery - Picture the Poet (Carlisle) (2016)
• Beningbrough Hall (York) - Making Her Mark (2017)
• National Portrait Gallery (London) - Contemporary Portraits (2019)

• National Portrait Gallery, London: 22 prints (as of 19 June 2023)[1]

Media related to Andrew Catlin at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• National Portrait Gallery
• Summer of 69
• Artnet
• f-ish Exhibition Review
• William Turnbull Portrait
• Irish Cultural Centre