Harry Borden is a star speaker at our next Festival of Outdoor Photography on January 31st, along with his son, Fred. Here’s a reminder of why you should definitely book to hear him at this unmissable event.
As regular readers of AP will know, Harry Borden has photographed hundreds of faces famous during his long career, for the likes of Time Magazine, Vogue and the New Yorker.
Harry, who is full of great stories about his celebrity subjects, is a double World Press photo winner, and the National Portrait Gallery has over 100 of his prints in their permanent collection.
In 2023 he teamed up with Fred Borden to set up a hugely successful YouTube channel where he shares the stories behind his portraits of everyone from Hilary Clinton and Keir Starmer to Daniel Radcliffe and The Spice Girls.
In this talk at the Festival, Harry will reflect on his work and, with Fred, discuss their YouTube journey and what they have learned along the way.
He had to roll with it
As a taster, here are his recollections of shooting the terrible twins of British music, Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis. Things didn’t go quite as Harry expected, as he reveals.
‘Back in 2002, I was commissioned to shoot portraits of Liam by The Observer Magazine,’ Harry recalls. ‘Before the shoot, I was full of trepidation as I walked around the building, looking for locations that would provide a good background.
Liam had a fearsome reputation for being rude and difficult and I thought he would be a pain in the ass to photograph. However, when I met him, to my surprise I found he was an absolute sweetheart. He was actually very sensitive and helpful…’
However, Noel, who used to have a reputation for being more consistent and professional when it came to PR duties, was more challenging than Harry expected during a later pre-gig shoot. ‘A truculent Noel, then aged 38, was reluctantly going through the motions… Noel’s mind was clearly elsewhere, he wasn’t giving me much and the shoot was soon drawn to a close.
I stayed for most of the concert, but there was an aggressively laddish atmosphere with lots of drinking, and fights were breaking out among men at the front of the stage. I was glad to pack my gear into the car and head out!’
Clarkson’s not so funny farm
If the Gallagher brothers surprised Harry with their usual role reversal, TV motormouth turned gentleman farmer, Jeremy Clarkson, lived up to his ‘difficult’ reputation. ‘(Clarkson) made insulting generalisations about photographers,’ Harry ruefully recalls. ‘He had a bad back and was curmudgeonly from start to finish.’
‘I cajoled and bullied him into posing in various locations and eventually we ended up in the goat pen. The Clarkson persona we see on television is not an act. He doesn’t like photographers or being photographed and when you have that level of success, why do something you don’t want to do?’
Music and TV stars aside, Harry has also shot a distinguished roster of politicians, including the current UK prime minister, Kier Starmer. ‘Starmer and I are a similar age and he couldn’t have been nicer during the shoot.
Although from looking at the metadata of my files I can see I was given just five minutes and 27 seconds, I managed to get a fair degree of variation in the pictures.’
‘My Hilary Clinton hell’
A much tougher politician, however, was Hilary Clinton, which some readers might find surprising given her poised but generally genial public persona. As Harry recalls of the 2018 shoot, ‘it was indicative of the contempt that some famous people have towards those lower in the food chain… as they would probably regard us, bottom feeders.’
Harry ended up getting what he wanted, but he describes the whole experience as ‘irritating’ (it even drove him back to smoking, thankfully temporarily!)
So, everyone attending Harry’s talk at The Festival of Outdoor Photography can look forward to more entertaining and revealing anecdotes from this natural public speaker, as well as getting invaluable insights into portrait photography generally. As he says, ‘you never know how a shoot will pan out.’
As mentioned, Harry will also talk about how he has successfully pivoted to become a major YouTube attraction.
Early bird tickets for the Festival of Photography on January 31st are onsale until November 23rd, but hurry, as they are selling fast. Other top-name speakers include Drew Gardner, Ron Timehin, Amanda Akokhia and Denise Maxwell. Book your tickets here.
