Photo London 2025

From Brigitte Bardot’s windswept gaze to Lady Gaga’s playful theatrics, our selections for Photo London 2025 are more than portraits – they are fragments of cultural history. Spanning decades and disciplines, these works reveal the enduring power of the still image to distill charisma, creativity and the essence of an era into a single frame.

This year, we bring together an exceptional selection from the archives: Terry O’Neill’s instinctive genius behind the camera, Gered Mankowitz’s intimate moments with the late Marianne Faithfull, Eve Arnold’s quiet backstage connection with Marilyn Monroe, and the grace and strength of Audrey Hepburn as seen by Norman Parkinson. Each image is a collaboration between artist and subject, moment and memory.

Alongside such icons are the quieter stories: an Elvis lookalike in Wigan, a cowboy in the American West, a rising star before the spotlight. These photographs remind us that fame may draw our attention, but humanity – candid, stylised or spontaneous – holds it.