Ami Barwell

Ami Barwell

Music/ Portrait Photographer

Ami Barwell was born in Yorkshire, but now bases her photography business in London. She’s been taking pictures since she was young, but she’s been a professional photographer for the last 10 years, mainly focusing on music photography and portraiture. She’s one of Europe’s top music photographers, and as well as being a personal photographer for a number of bands. Barwell is not as well known as other iconic music photographers, mainly because the bands she photographs are not as well known. In one of her interviews she says that she enjoys “discovering talent, as opposed to taking pictures of well known bands. She worked as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s sole photographer for 5 years, before going on tour with the White Stripes. Barwell has toured with Kings of Leon, the White Stripes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Snow Patrol and the Blood Brothers. In August 2009, she launched her own clothing line, “By Ami Barwell”. It’s made up of her pictures on band t-shirts done by the British fashion company Ben Sherman.

Barwell’s pictures have a lot of depth in them; the backgrounds are all solid colors that don’t distract from the main picture. Barwell usually works in black and white, or red tinted photos, but when she does work in color her photos are just as moving. Many of her photos have been used as album covers and symbols for bands. While other music photographers use the background in pictures to make their image even more exciting, Barwell tends to focus intensely on the subject of the photo, while leaving the background up for interpretation. There are many famous photos where the background makes the picture, but Ami doesn’t do that. She chooses to have the background completely contrast with the photo, making you focus only on the subject of the photo.

She takes very similar pictures to those of Gered Mankowitz, but while he only focuses on already famous bands; Ami manages to take pictures of bands people have never heard of and make them just as iconic as those taken of Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones or many of the other famous rock bands. Mankowitz is known mainly for his work with Jimi Hendrix, Marianne Faithful and the Rolling Stones, as well as his interesting use of background. He, like Barwell often has a flat color, or flat black as the background instead of an actual scene.

Mankowitz was born in London in1946, as the son of Wolf Mankowitz, a screenwriter, and Ann Makowitz a psychotherapist. He left school at 15 to intern for the photography legend Tom Blau. Mankowitz set up his own studio in Masons Yard in the heart of the 60’s. He began taking pictures of pop artists Chad & Jeremy before moving on to Marianne Faithful, and then the Rolling Stones. He began to get recognized in 1967 as a music photographer for the Rolling Stones.

Annie Leibovitz was another amazing photographer. She is probably one of the most influential female photographers in history. She became interested in photography in high school, and continued to learn in college. Leibovitz is Jewish and she tries to incorporate her religion and beliefs into her photos in any way that she can.

Anton Corbjin is one of the most accomplished music photographers. He not only takes pictures, and does album covers, he’s directed music videos, worked on movies, and written books. He is considered one of the fathers of the modern style of music photographers. He was born in the Netherlands in 1955; he started taking pictures when he was very young. He became interested in music photography when he was watching an up and coming band called Herman Brood. He started taking photos of them, knowing that they were growing more popular; in fact the band became popular partly because of his pictures. Since then he’s photographed Depeche Mode, U2, David Bowie, Miles Davis, Bjork, Capitain Beefheart, Kim Wilde, Robert De Niro, Elvis Costello, Stephen Hawking, Clint Eastwood and Herbert Gronemeyer as well as many others. His pictures are very striking, mostly black and white with a high contrast; he focuses on both the subject and the background.

There were other photographers that paved the way for Ami Barwell, but Anton Corbjin, Annie Leibovitz and Gered Mankowitz were the photographers most similar to her. All three do most of their work in black and white, as well as focusing on the foreground rather than the background.  Ami Barwell is a fantastic photographer, and in year to come, I think she’ll become someone worth remembering.

Bands:

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Cage the Elephant

Interpol

Ben Sherman

Bernard Fanning

The GO

Blondie

Beck

Arctic Monkeys

Devendra Banhart

Corrine Bailey Rae

Cold War Kids

The Distillers

Dr. Hook

Franz Ferdinand

Foo Fighters

Katie Holmes

Hot Hot Heat

Iggy Pop

Billy Idol

JET

Radiohead

REM

Snow Patrol

The White Stripes

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Lenny Kravitz

Kings of Leon

Macy Gray

The New York Dolls

Pavement

Queens of the Stoneage

Works Cited

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"Art Directors Club / Hall of Fame." Art Directors Club / Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1999/?id=312>.

"Gered Mankowitz." Gered Mankowitz. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.mankowitz.com/>.

"Gered Mankowitz Products - Legende Celebrity Art." Legende Celebrity Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://shop.legendecelebrityart.com/brands/Gered-Mankowitz.html>.

"Linda McCartney Quotes." Quotes and Quotations at BrainyQuote. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/linda_mccartney.html>.

"Literal Magazine - Latin American Voices." Literal Magazine - Latin American Voices. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.literalmagazine.com/es/archive-L15.php>.

"ROBERT FREEMAN." ROBERT FREEMAN. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.robertfreeman.net/>.

"Ray Coleman. "McCartney. Yesterday and today"." Пол Маккартни. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://www.wingspan.ru/bookseng/coleman/coleman08.html>.

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