Bryan Adams is widely known as a musician, singer and songwriter, but over the past decades he has also established a significant career as a photographer. His work is centred primarily on portraiture, with a visual language that is direct, intimate and often stripped back, allowing the personality of the sitter to remain at the centre of the image.
Adams has photographed for leading international publications including Interview, Harper’s Bazaar and British and German Vogue. His subjects have included many of the most recognisable figures in music, film, fashion and contemporary culture, and this celebrity portraiture has become one of the most distinctive parts of his photographic practice.
In 2003, Adams founded Zoo Magazine, further extending his involvement in fashion, art and visual culture. His photography has received international recognition and has been exhibited at museums and galleries including Fotografiska Stockholm, the National Portrait Gallery in London, Saatchi Gallery and Haus der Kunst in Munich.
Alongside fashion and celebrity portraiture, Adams has also undertaken more socially engaged photographic projects. These include Wounded: The Legacy of War, a series portraying British servicemen and women who suffered life-changing injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. The project reveals a more documentary and reflective side of his work, while remaining rooted in his interest in the individual subject.
Adams’ photographic practice moves naturally between editorial commissions and fine art portraiture. One example represented by The PhotoGallery is his portrait of Kate Moss, Reclining in Stockings, London, 2000, produced as an archival pigment print in a limited edition.
The PhotoGallery presented a solo exhibition of Bryan Adams’ photography in Halmstad in the summer of 2018, further establishing his photographic work within the gallery’s exhibition programme.
Across his career, Adams has developed a body of work that combines celebrity, fashion and fine art portraiture with a strong sense of presence and intimacy. His own position as an internationally recognised cultural figure adds another dimension to a photographic practice deeply connected to music, fashion and contemporary visual culture.
