George Michael, ‘Red Laser’

© Brian Aris
London, U.K. 2007
Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity

‘I first met George in 1983 when he came to my studio with Andrew Ridgeley to be photographed as ‘Wham’. In an era when boy bands were destined to be successful, a due seemed very unliklely. Another Simon and Garfunkel? I doubted it. How wrong I was!’ Brian Aris

‘Having lost Bowie it was awful to then lose the enormous talent that was George Michael. I could never quite believe the vulnerability that seemed to be so apparent in an artist with such fantastic talent and who was such a brilliant performer on stage. I don’t think George ever looked forward to his still shoots with relish. On one album cover session we did I shot one roll of film and two Polaroids and he took one look and said ‘Great, that’s the cover. Session over. Thankfully we managed to persuade him to shoot more but the cover was the shot he selected from the Polaroid taken in the first five minutes.’ Brian Aris

Brian Aris began his photographic career as a photojournalist, working for a London agency. A series of frontline assignments took him around the world covering various humanitarian crises from Northern Ireland and Lebanon to Palestine, Africa and Vietnam. He then decided on a complete change of direction and opened a studio in London where he started photographing fashion and glamour models for newspapers and magazines. Next he turned away from the model world to concentrate on the music industry that was exploding in Britain and gradually broadened his studio work to include pop and rock stars. 

Brian Aris has covered every aspect of the music scene from punk rock, glam’ rock and straight rock ‘n’ roll to the emergence of the boy bands and then the girl power. His photography has been on show at The National Portrait Gallery in London, the prestigious Recontres D’Arles exhibition in France, and at the Royal Circle of Art in Barcelona. His archive represents one of the largest individual collections in the United Kingdom.

National Portrait Gallery
The Times
Harpers Bazaar
Wall Street International Magazine
E.S.
Telegraph
Volta Cafe
King’s Road Rock
It’s Nice That
Culture24
Independent

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