BIOGRAPHY
All
images on this website were taken by Philip J. Bigg, a photographer
now based in west London who was encouraged to pick up his old man's
box brownie as soon as he was old enough to hold it steady. It wasn't
until regularly attending music concerts in the eighties documenting
performances by a diversity of artistes such as David Bowie, Kraftwerk,
Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, the Buzzcocks, the Pretenders and Siouxsie
& the Banshees that he began to show any photographic promise.
Philip has been an avid music lover since the first album he purchased
- Bowie's Aladdin Sane had perverted the family's mono record player
in their suburban Essex living room.
On leaving school Philip worked as a clerk for a large organisation
in the big smoke for a few years whilst considering what career path
to take. Jacking in the job, packing what he could into his morris
minor he headed north to study photography, creative writing and performance
at Manchester Metropolitan University. During the three years he escaped
overseas to study under the tutelage of renowned professors in the
USA and Germany and also to inter-rail around Europe. In his final
year he toured northern venues with indie band the Desert Wolves adding
occasional backing vocals and providing a visual backdrop with the
slide collection he'd amassed over the years.
Ailing from the wet north, his morris minor limped south containing
a scroll for a B.A. (Hons) in Creative Arts that Philip managed to
salvage even though Manchester’s music scene had tried it's
damnedest to distract him. Working the summer at Mirror Group Newspapers
as a Documentation Clerk he saved enough to jet off to South-East
Asia with his partner for a post University gap year touring India,
Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Returning to live
with his partner in a small village in rural Essex he signed on to
the Government's Enterprise Allowance Scheme and set up a studio in
Chelmsford offering a Cibachrome photographic printing service to
local businesses. At this time he began exhibiting his travel images
nationwide.
After a brief stint as a photographer at Essex Police in the nineties
printing up horrific scenes of crime, Philip left his white Essex
socks, his partner and a clapped out morris minor behind and moved
across London to take publicity photographs at Thames Valley University
in Ealing. At this time he became interested in fashion photography
specialising in black & white infrared images and continued his
desire for travelling to exotic climes taking long sojourns to India
(again), China, Indonesia, Cuba, Miami and eastern Europe. He has
consistently staged exhibitions of his work and had images exhibited
at the Royal Photographic Society, Bath, the Royal Festival Hall and
the Association of Photographers Gallery in London. His work has won
prestigious Kodak and Kentmere Industry awards, has been published
in Travel magazines, Annual Reports, Educational prospectuses, clothing
catalogues, model portfolios and used to publicise films and theatrical
and musical performances. Since obtaining an M.A. in Cultural Studies
at the tail end of the nineties Philip left TVU to freelance and work
on his writing. Having written a couple of film scripts and novels
that are collecting dust on his bookshelf, that illusive calling from
Hollywood remains illusive.
In
2005 Philip launched Bigg World Photography, a travel image library
which contains his vast collection of photography that he's amassed
on his travels over the past fifteen years. His travel images are
available for sale or hire for publication. He will consider photographic
commissions of any nature especially if it involves getting away from
the British winter.
Philip's
work is dedicated to his late parents -
Peter Alfred Bigg 04/12/1928 - 11/02/2004 and June Bigg 09/06/1932
- 04/12/2006
©2005 Bigg World Photography
All
Rights Reserved.
Use
of any images found on this site without purchase or written authorisation
is prohibited by copyright law.
