Steve Russell
Steve Russell has shot photographs since he was a child, his passion for the camera eventually prompting his father into building him a darkroom. That proved an enlightened investment, ultimately helping Russell transform a schoolboy hobby into an award-winning career.
Particularly adept at photographing sculpture - a notoriously difficult thing to capture thanks to the vagaries of ambient light on three-dimentional objects, Russell has been working closely with Pangolin for 20 years.
Russell’s passion for African life and culture was first ignited on a visit to Uganda with the Ruwenzori Sculpture Foundation when he was commissioned to photograph the site and development of the sculpture foundry and gallery there.
Frequent journeys to East Africa over the last twelve years have provided Steve with huge inspiration and the opportunity to photograph an impressive variety of animals and bird species as well as staggering scenery, from the Rwenzori Mountains of Western Uganda to the Tanzanian coastline.
A mammoth expedition to the Rwenzori Mountains in 2018 also known as ‘Mountains of the Moon’ led to a successfull exhibition of the same title at The Royal Geographical Society, London. A photographic exploration of the Rwenzori Mountains, five thousand metres up, with their glaciers, rocky outcrops and unique variety of plants like nowhere else on earth captured by Russell on his Hasselblad.
His images have been recognised in various competitions including Hasselblad Masters 2016, Travel Photographer of the Year 2015 and the British Book Design and Production awards 2013, where his book ‘Katonda Wenge’ was shortlisted for Best Book in the ‘Photographic, Arts, Architecture and Monographs’ category.
Russell’s work features in both private and public collections including ‘Nature In Art’ Gallery and Museum in Gloucestershire, the Royal Geographical Society Collection and the British Council in Kampala, Uganda.