Photographer Overview
Profile pic, Fastest man in the World in the water, Ben Proud, 50m Freestyle Champion
“We at the National Portrait Gallery know about portraits - it’s what we are about - and David’s are some of the best we have seen.”
Sandy Nairne, Former Director of the National Portrait Gallery.
David Partner is a photographer in the mould and spirit of pictorialist photographers such as Paul Strand, August Sander, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Walker Evans. His work has the same technical attention to detail and open objectivity in his subjects. Like these historic photographers, David is interested in objectively capturing the ordinary people of his time; it is exactly this quality that makes the pictorialist photographers still interesting to us today.
David has an exceptional ability to put his subjects at ease, resulting in uniquely frank and open portraits. His 2004 series “Heads of Government” was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery. This series of black and white portraits focused on the ministers then responsible for governing the UK. The close-cropped nature of this series brings the viewer right up to the subject; people all-too often shrouded behind the mists of upper-tier government. These politicians are ordinary people like you and I: flawed, ugly, beautiful, happy, sad, thoughtful, human. David delves deeper than the surface of the “personality” in order to find the core of the person he is photographing.