A book project initiated with Danielle Inga, Resolve: An Intimate Survey of Work (Concrete Editions 2013) is a study of an ever-burgeoning social movement:40 individuals necessitated or compelled to run small businesses, work freelance or pursue self-employment, each photographed in locations indicative of their work.
Commissioned for The Sustainable Fashion Handbook by Sandy Black this series takes the 'straight up' street portrait as a starting point and uses specially selected locations to create a further visual dynamic.
Celebrating the overlooked and the everyday, Visual Athletics Club was established by husband and wife team Edward Barber and Danielle Inga in 2006. It takes the mantra 'always be looking' as a starting point. Images are generated on a daily basis, using a 35mm film camera, documenting trips abroad and across the UK. Most recently online at VAC blogspot, 100 days/4 million conversations, a visual palindrome of 100 images was posted in response to the 2015 UK General Election campaign.
A series of narrative portraits, specially constructed to reflect the occupation of each subject. Using a large format camera and precise lighting, each image has been carefully considered and staged to emphasise the presence of the sitter.
This project gained access to these private and sensitive zones, recording teenagers on home territory, exactly as they wanted to be seen. Movie lighting and instant Polaroid prints from a large format 10"x 8" view camera concentrated the minds of all involved. 15-18: Teenagers in their rooms was exhibited at Fashion Space Gallery, London and as part of Teenage Kicks: Adolescence as Subject at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin in 2004.
The first major photographic documentation of London's Square Mile since the Big Bang of 1986. Using an uncompromising formal approach and a large format 5" x 4" view camera these 138 portraits reveal a broad cross-section of City people in immaculate detail, regardless of their status. Edward Barber: In the City was published as a limited edition book (Concrete Editions 2000) and shown as a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2001.
A series of luminous formal portraits celebrating the intricate detail and complex architectural structure of flowers – from gardens, fields and hedgerows. Photographed in an ambulant studio with meticulous lighting and vivid colour Flower Portraits was first shown at Concord Sylvania Gallery, London in 1997.
Living conditions in the UK recorded across a range of different domestic environments, with initial funding from The Photographers' Gallery Trust in 1990.
An extensive colour documentary record of designers and retailers, this body of work formed part of the British Council touring exhibition All Dressed Up: British Fashion in the 1980s and was published in A Stitch in Time (Gunnersbury Park Museum 1987).
Documenting changes in the working lives of people in this London borough. Islington's People was funded by Islington Council in 1987 to produce a book and exhibition.
A five-year documentation of anti-nuclear protest and the peace movement in Britain. The images were widely published in the mainstream media and used extensively by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and peace campaigners worldwide. A photobook Peace Moves: Nuclear Protest in the 1980s (Chatto & Windus 1984) was published and the work was exhibited at Camerawork, London and Watershed, Bristol as
Bomb Disposal: Peace Camps & Direct Action in 1984.
Imperial War Museum London will be re-presenting the work as Peace Signs in May 2016, as part of the IWM Contemporary programme.
The residents of the Cheshire Foundation Home in Liphook, Hampshire photographed in the late 1970s — in their own rooms in a way that places the visual emphasis firmly on their humanity and individuality rather than on their disability.
An in depth examination of families living in a variety of urban surroundings during 1975, using the formal environmental portrait as a means of revealing their very different domestic interiors.
The fitters and turners at the Vosper Thornycroft shipyard in Portchester, Hampshire – photographed with ambient light and grainy 35mm film, these portraits offer an unusual insight into an archetypal male dominated working environment of the 1970s.
A selection of eminent personalities photographed for clients in publishing,
commerce, and the arts.