About The Archive

The Barry Lategan Archive celebrates the work of one of the great photographic talents to emerge in the mid-1960s, at a time when London was a worldwide centre for art, music and fashion. The mission is to preserve, celebrate and share this extraordinary legacy, recognising it’s significant historical and cultural value.

Set up by Barry’s son Dylan, the archive contains tens of thousands of prints and negatives which are currently undergoing the process of being organised into a recorded library.

The archive contains works spanning five decades, from his fashion and beauty commissions in the 1960s-90s including his iconic 1966 portraits of Twiggy, to advertising and commercials assignments in the 1980s-90s, from his Chanel No 5 campaigns to an iconic Pirelli Calendar in 1988. It also contains a wide collection of personal works, including nudes, still-life, trees, travel and documentary and candid street photography.

Following a traumatic brain injury and loss of his London studio space in 2007, the archive spent a number of years in storage. In 2020, four years after Barry was taken into care with Frontotemporal dementia, Dylan began the process of digitizing and organising the work, with the aim of preserving and celebrating his acheivements within his lifetime. This has begun to reveal not just the wealth of fashion and portraiture for which Barry is renowned, but also the profoundly artistic nature of it. He has always had a huge fascination with the concept of beauty itself, and the ideas that inform it, and this theme keeps arising as more of the archive is uncovered.

As the archive grows and become more accessible we intend to help raise awareness and contribute towards Rare Brain Disease and Head Injury organizations and causes. Please get in touch to discuss collaborative opportunities.