page_title: Clive Barda
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Clive Barda / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Sarah Beth Briggs
context_page_description: Clive Blackmore Barda OBE, FRSA is a London-based, British freelance photographer best known for capturing the performances of classical musicians and artists of the stage. During his career spanning over five decades, Barda has created a collection of over a million photographs of performers, composers, and conductors.
context_section_description: Barda decided to combine his interests in photography and classical music, and a chance encounter with a journalist for South Wales Magazine led to his first commission: photographing the harpist Susan Drake at home, on 12 November 1968. At the time, Drake's husband, John Wilbraham, was recording the Haydn and Hummel trumpet concertos and the producer asked Barda to shoot the album's sleeve. Drake then showed Barda's work to her agent, who recommended him to other artists, thus opening up opportunities for further engagements. Within a few months, Barda had his big break:
  In 1969, I went to a concert at London's South Bank, where pianist Daniel Barenboim and the cellist Jacqueline du Pré were playing Beethoven sonatas. (...) Barenboim was the most famous musician I had come close to and I decided to ask if I could photograph him conducting. To my amazement, Barenboim said "OK".
  — Clive Barda, Performance! Musicians in Photographs, "An Interview with Clive Barda" by Graeme Kay
  The rehearsal took place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall the following Tuesday, and Barda showed the resulting contact sheets to Barenboim a few days later, in the Royal Festival Hall's green room. There, he also met Peter Andry, a senior executive at EMI, who suggested that Barda show his pictures to the art department at EMI. This immediately led to Barda's first major commission: to photograph Yehudi Menuhin, at EMI's No. 1 Studio, Abbey Road.
  During the following decades, Barda has portrayed the world's leading classical musicians, as well as performers in opera, dance, theatre and musicals, as a freelance photographer. In her review of Barda's book Performance! (2000) for The Guardian, Charlotte Higgins stated:
  Over the past 30 years, Barda has photographed anyone who is anyone in music, from late, great luminaries such as Lucia Popp, Olivier Messiaen, Benjamin Britten and Charles Groves to today's young stars such as Evgeny Kissin, David Daniels and Cecilia Bartoli.
  — Charlotte Higgins, The classical picture show
  Barda has been closely associated with major British locations, such as the
  Barbican Hall, 
  Edinburgh International Festival, 
  English National Opera, 
  Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 
  Her Majesty's Theatre, 
  National Theatre, 
  Opera North, 
  Queen Elizabeth Hall, 
  Queen's Hall, 
  Royal Albert Hall, 
  Royal Festival Hall, 
  Royal Lyceum Theatre,
  Royal Opera House, 
  Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon,
  St John's, Smith Square,
  Usher Hall,
  and Welsh National Opera.
  He has also worked abroad: in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, the U.S., and China. He has taken photographs during rehearsals and recordings in the studios of AIR Studios, the BBC, CBS, EMI's Abbey Road Studios, Olympic Studios, among others, as well as at the home venues of major orchestras such as the LSO.
  By 2012, Barda had already produced more than a million photographs, and has been referred to as the doyen of British music photography.
caption: Sarah Beth Briggs (29 September 2010) by Barda
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "SARAH BETH BRIGGS - pianist;\n49 Queen's Gate Terrace;\nLondon, UK;\n29 September 2010;\n\nCredit: \u00a9 CLIVE BARDA/ArenaPAL;", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3S", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4.1", "Image DateTime": "2011:07:08 17:57:35", "Image Artist": "Clive Barda", "Image Copyright": "\u00a92010 Clive Barda  clivebarda@pobox.com  +44(0)20 8579 5202", "Image ExifOffset": "436", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1148", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9293", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "71/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:09:29 12:43:08", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:09:29 12:43:08", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "2827819/500000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "199/50", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Flash", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "110", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "08", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "08", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "110", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "2014293", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[70, 200, 14/5, 14/5]", "EXIF LensModel": "70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8"}