Authors Portraits – Stratford on Avon

It is a great privilege to work with the Stratford Literary Festival and continue with my Festival Faces project, Since 2015 I have set up a ‘pop-up’ studio and produced a series of portraits of the authors, celebrities and those involved with the festival . The idea was to create a body of work that celebrates a great cultural event and creates an archive that shall eventually be held with my archive at Birmingham Central Library and with an suitable location in Stratford on Avon, hopefully this shall be confirmed in the near future.

This recent festival of May 2024 almost did not happen as the main venue Crowne Plaza suffered a major fire just before the opening, the amazing team lead by Annie Ashworth managed to relocate the event and delivered another great festival, I am not sure how they did it but they did, the resulting events were spread across a number of locations, but mainly at the Stratford Playhouse & the Welcome Hotel.

Sadly this impacted what I could do as I need a set up studio to capture the images you see, so I elected to be based at the Playhouse, and only managed to set up a ‘small’ studio when schedule allowed at the Welcome Hotel.

Portrait photography has its challenges, often time is limited with subjects, but those I was able to photograph are to be seen on the dedicated project website – Stratford Festival Faces  

I am grateful to all the subjects and all involved with the festival, this and every year .