Gavin Evans

b.1964

Gavin Evans was born in ’64 in the shipping and mining heartland of the North East of England. His interest in photography was ignited at the impressionable age of 12 on discovery of a neighbours portfolio- the work of a retired forensic photographer. In this extraordinary keepsake were abstracted images of victims, fatalities and cadavers strewn throughout a tropical landscape. He once described this moment as, "my epiphany; the camera could be trained on anything – no topic was taboo and no subject sacrosanct.”

Over the course of a subsequent career spanning decades, Evans has photographed countless cultural icons, including; David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Ai Weiwei, Juliette Binoche, Gary Oldman, Harvey Keitel, Daniel Craig, Björk and Peter Fonda. “I create man in my own image,” he reflects on his creative process. He has worked for The New York Times, Empire, Esquire and The Guardian among many others. He work has featured in renowned museums including MoMA, The British Library, The Harpa and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He now lives and works in Berlin. 

THE SESSION: Arguably his most famous collaboration, in 1995 Evans was hired to shoot David Bowie for Time Out Magazine. Bowie was promoting his next album Outside, and met Evans at his studio in London with longtime friend and collaborator Brian Eno. The resulting forty-minute photo shoot produced countless stunning portraits of Bowie that are now among the most famous pictures of the musician. 

"Gavin Evans 40-minute photographic session with David Bowie, has come to be recognised as a uniquely significant cultural and historical record of the legendary artist." -- GQ Magazine

In 2005, Bowie requested a photograph from The Session to hang in his Manhattan office, and in 2012 he instructed the portrait to be on the cover and the final page of the V&A Bowie Is book. Images from The Session were most recently featured in David Bowie Icon, a book published in September 2020 which is described by Interview magazine as featuring "the most noteworthy collection of David Bowie images ever accumulated."