Clive Arrowsmith

Clive Arrowsmith is a London based, celebrated international photographer.

After leaving art school where he studied painting and design, he began taking photographs whilst working as a graphic designer for television.

Leaving television to work as a photographer, he soon gained commissions from leading fashion magazines, most notably, British & French Vogue, Harpers, The Sunday Times Colour Magazine,Vanity Fair, Esquire U.S.A, and F.T. “How to Spend It”.

Clive continues to work in this genre in both editorial and advertising photography and is equally known for his music and celebrity images; Paul McCartney, Wings, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, Daniel Barenboim, Anna Netrebko, Art Garfunkel, Def Leppard, Prince Charles, Michael Caine and Damien Hirst to name a few.

Clive is also an accomplished landscape and still life photographer with a large collection of stock photos available at Celebrity Pictures Ltd.

Clive Arrowsmith is the only photographer to have photographed the Pirelli Calendar two years in succession.

Having worked on many major stills advertising campaigns; De Beers, Revlon, G.H.D. Morello, Caroline Castigliano, Lexus, Hassleblad etc, Clive has continued to broaden his creative scope moving on to direct commercials for Heinz, Revlon, Hamlet Cigars (winner of The Silver Lion Cannes Film Festival), Rapeed Sunglasses, Greenmail Whitney Beer and music videos of artists like Lee Griffiths, Jamiroquai, Jools Holland, ZTT and Def Leppard.

Clive has recently been working in Taiwan on the Free Tibet campaign with the Heavy Metal band, Chthonic, and has also photographed His Holiness the Dalai Lama several times.

Clive Arrowsmith: Fashion, Beauty & Portraits:

Hardcover: 324 pages

Publisher: ACC Editions (28 Oct. 2015)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1851498087

ISBN-13: 978-1851498086

Product Dimensions: 27.4 x 3.3 x 32.6 cm

This is the first book to celebrate Clive Arrowsmith’s long and diverse career. The contents of Clive Arrowsmith: Fashion, Beauty & Portraits are nothing short of breath-taking. The execution is everything you would ever want in a book focused on fashion and beauty photography including the size and quality of reproduction. There is only one page of “text” in other words, this is all about the images and not about the words.

Clive Arrowsmith is not a photographer that one can easily describe but it is safe to say that he is part Avedon, Hiro, Mapplethorpe, Ritts, Bourdin, Scavullo, Coffin, and more. His influences are vast, and his output is nothing less than astounding and prodigious.

What is so arresting about this collection is that so much of it is un-tampered with in terms of retouching. These are photographs that are of the “warts of all” variety – none are truly disturbing unless you only seek perfect, unwrinkled faces with not a pore in sight.

Yes, you can see the powdered faces, crevices, and less than perfection, but this is reality in many ways and then there is some fantasy that comes along with it almost as a counterpoint to the hard truths as seen through his lens.

This book clearly demonstrates that photography can be raised to an art form even when photographing fashion and beauty. Many of the images are timeless and none of them are banal. This epic volume is aimed at those immersed in or even curious about fashion and photography.

Jeffrey Felner is a dedicated participant and nimble historian in the businesses of fashion and style. Decades of experience allow him to pursue almost any topic relating to fashion and style with unique insight and unrivalled acumen.