Hugh Arnold

Career

Hugh Arnold (British) was born in 1956 in Chester and trained as an actor before becom­ing a pho­tog­ra­pher. After being offered a con­tract by Australian Vogue, he returned to Europe and secured his first exclu­sive assign­ment with Armani for Per Lui and Lei under Franca Sozzani in Milan. 

Visual Style

He met fash­ion jour­nal­ist Hamish Bowles dur­ing the col­lec­tions in Paris, who asked him to pho­to­graph Carla Bruni for Harper’s Bazaar and Queen. He sub­se­quently worked for a range of mag­a­zines includ­ing Vogue, Tatler, Condé Nast Traveler, Glamour, and many oth­ers. Soon after, he began shoot­ing inter­na­tional adver­tis­ing cam­paigns for L’Oréal, Pantene, Wella, Max Factor, Nivea, and La Perla. 

Major Series and Works

Alongside his com­mer­cial work, Arnold also pur­sued fine art pho­tog­ra­phy, cre­at­ing a series of works fea­tur­ing mod­els Nika Lauriatis and Polina Barbasova. This series took him to loca­tions includ­ing Egypt, Australia, Fiji, and Gozo, an island off Malta. The result, Agua Nacida (mean­ing “born of water”), is a large-​scale col­lec­tion of under­wa­ter nudes. The pho­tographs explore var­i­ous themes, includ­ing fem­i­nin­ity and the human form.
Hugh Arnold pho­tographs the sub­merged human body as a metaphor­i­cal explo­ration of human devel­op­ment — what it means to age, love, con­nect, and strug­gle. His work has been fea­tured in Wall Street International Magazine, Art Daily, and Haute Living.

Recognition

The artist cur­rently lives and works in France.

Reading the Work

Hugh Arnold’s work finds its bal­ance in a sen­sual and fluid aes­thetic, where light, move­ment, and aquatic mat­ter trans­form sil­hou­ettes. His work stands out through a visual sig­na­ture based on grace, com­po­si­tion, and a deeply phys­i­cal rela­tion­ship between the model, light, and envi­ron­ment. Viewing his images ben­e­fits from atten­tion to sub­tle nuances: a com­po­si­tional detail, a par­tic­u­lar dis­tance from the sub­ject, light, or tex­ture is often enough to reveal their depth.